The Mozilla Foundation has outlined new features on its Firefox browser to help enhance web performance and protect its users with a default blocker for cryptomining malware.
The Vice President of product, Nick Nguyen made it known on Thursday, August 30, 2018, that future versions of the open-source browser will by default, block crypto mining malware scripts.
“In the near future, Firefox will—by default, protect users by blocking tracking, while offering a clear set of controls to give our users more choice over what information they share with sites” – he wrote in the blog post.
While shedding more light on scripts that exploit an individual’s spare computer power to mine cryptocurrencies, he wrote:
“Deceptive practices that invisibly collect identifiable user information or degrade user experience are becoming more common.”
Nguyen also spoke about ‘trackers fingerprint users,’ a technique used to identify users by their device properties, as well as blocking websites who secretly deploy cryptomining scripts which the users are unaware of—practices which the Mozilla Foundation believes makes the “web a more hostile place to be.”
In a wider bid to prevent third-party tracking scripts from affecting user experience, future versions of Firefox will pay more attention to improving page performance. This new feature is being trialed on Firefox Nightly version and its success is expected to be consolidated in Firefox 65 version.
“We’ve already made this available for our Firefox Nightly users to try out, and we will be running a shield study to test the experience with some of our beta users in September. We aim to bring this protection to all users in Firefox 65, and will continue to refine our approach to provide the strongest possible protection while preserving a smooth user experience” – he noted on the blog.
Mozilla has toed the line of Google and Opera in introducing measures offering crypto miner protection for its users.
Cryptominer protection has already buoyed the desktop version of Opera. In January, the company announced its default crypto miner protect to the smartphone version of its browser. While Google is yet to release any official statement on the banning of third-party scripts found on its website, it is believed the company has already banned cryptomining apps from its Play store.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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