Firefox offers the same security features as the Tor browser

Canvas Fingerprint is a method used by advertising companies to track users. Blocking this feature will be an important addition to user privacy protection methods in Firefox.

Canvas Fingerprint has become popular in recent years

This method has been popular in recent years after the EU forced websites to display cookie popups. Because this method does not need to store anything on the user's browser, minimizing complicated legal issues is very popular with advertisers.

The Canvas Fingerprint works by loading an HTML Canvas marker inside a hidden iframe, allowing the browser to display a series of elements and text. The generated image will be converted into a hash file.

Each browser has a different display so it can track the user's browser when he visits different pages. Interested readers can learn more about this method here. 

Borrow a feature from the Tor Browser

Tor Browser solves this problem by default to block websites from accessing canvas data. The browser will display popup every time the page wants to access the canvas element.

Firefox offers the same security features as the Tor browser Picture 1

Mozilla engineers are planning to notify users with a popup every time the page wants to retrieve data from HTML, similar to asking the right to use webcam and microphone.

Firefox 58 plans to release on January 16, 2018.

The second feature Firefox takes from Tor

This is the second feature Mozilla borrowed from the Tor Project. Previously, Firefox 52 had a mechanism for not allowing websites to track users through system fonts.

The effort to make Firefox more solid is part of the Tor Uplift project, which initiatives to bring Tor Browser privacy features to Firefox. Tor is built on Firefox ESR and often takes features from Firefox.

In August 2016, Mozilla blocked a list of trace script host URLs. Earlier, Firefox also removed Battery Status API to improve user privacy.

Samuel Daniel

Update 24 May 2019