Mozilla Makes Private Browsing More Private In Firefox, Adds Tracking Protection

Mozilla is testing a new private browsing mode in Firefox that doesn’t just keep no trace of your porn browsing habits on your machine but that also blocks online services that could track you while you’re surfing the web.

That’s not unlike what plug-ins like Ghostery and the EFF’s Privacy Badger can do for you, but Firefox now combines that with its own incognito mode.

This new experimental feature is now available in the Firefox Developer Edition for Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as the Firefox Aurora channel on Android.

“Our hypothesis is that when you open a Private Browsing window in Firefox you’re sending a signal that you want more control over your privacy than current private browsing experiences actually provide,” the Firefox team writes today.

Even when you are in the private browsing mode, after all, online services can still track you through techniques like fingerprinting, even when they don’t have access to all of the cookies on your machine.

If you’ve ever used a plug-in with this kind of functionality, you’ve probably seen sites that simply break under the unbearable pressure of not being able to track you. Just like these plug-ins, the experimental Private Browsing mode lets you unblock some trackers so you can still use these sites.

The latest updates to these pre-beta versions of Firefox also now enforce add-on verification to keep users safe from rogue extensions.

Mozilla has lately gotten a lot of flak for adding features like a messenger and built-in Pocket support to Firefox. Adding this enhanced Private Browsing mode, however, will likely be something most Firefox users will welcome.