Firefox will enable hyperlink (Ping) checking by default

Mozilla recently revealed to some big tech sites that they will enable a tracking feature called checking hyperlink auditing, or in short, Ping, by default in the browser. Firefox, as well as all other browser-related platforms. While Mozilla does not elaborate on a specific time, this feature is implemented, but you should also be prepared for changes that may be a little confusing, especially in the context of hyperlinks. This link is being used by hackers to perform many DDoS attacks on a global scale recently.

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If you don't know, hyperlink checking is basically an HTML feature that allows websites to track clicks on links on their pages. To create hyperlinked or ping test URLs, you first need to create a regular hyperlinked HTML tag, but include the ping = "[url]" variable. When these links are clicked by the user, in addition to navigating to the linked page, the browser will also connect to the page listed in the ping = attribute, which can then be used to record the number of turns Click on the page, as shown below:

According to the above example, when the user clicks on the link, their browser will first connect to the website with the address https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/pong.php with a POST request and then, Navigate the browser to Google. This causes your browser to connect to 2 different websites while you only click 1 link. In other words, when these links are displayed on the page, they will appear as a normal link and if the user clicks on the link, there is no indication that a connection is being made. show up to another page.

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Potential privacy risks?

Earlier this month, quantrimang and many other tech news sites mentioned that the popularly used browsers such as Google Chrome, Opera, Microsoft Edge and Safari are gradually activating wearable hyperlinks. determined. Although some allow you to turn off this feature, all of the mentioned browsers will no longer allow users to do so in the future when new updates are applied.

For some users, any tracking method, including hyperlink testing, can contain privacy risks, and in this case, the user must be provided with a null ability. Edit them if you want.

For this reason, Firefox and Brave have been praised as well because at the time, these two browsers did not enable the hyperlink checking feature by default, and it seems to maintain this in the future. hybrid But with the recent move of Mozilla Firefox, it is unclear how the people who have previously praised and expected a lot of privacy when using this browser will now feel!

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Mozilla: This change is needed to improve performance

Regardless of the fact that some users feel that this feature can bring about privacy risks, Firefox developers consider hyperlink checking and monitoring when enabled by default to bring a The solution provides better performance.

In a blog post, WebKit developers explained that using hyperlinks is an improvement in performance because unlike other tracking methods, the Ping command won't block or delay navigation to the requested site.

"Turning off the Ping property or the Beacon API alone will not address the privacy implications of link analysis clicks, but instead encourage sites to further promote the Tracking techniques can compromise the user experience, in fact, the choice between support and non-Ping support is not a big privacy issue, but rather choose between a great and terrible user experience ".

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After reading this post, some experts from major technology forums and sites contacted Mozilla to see if they agreed with the views expressed in the other WebKit article. Accordingly, Mozilla representatives told BleepingComputer via email that they fully agree with WebKit developers' views on privacy risks and hyperlinked testing features:

"We agree that allowing the hyperlinked ping attribute that is often used to test hyperlinks is not something that poses a threat to privacy, but a category of issues that improve the human experience. used by providing sites with a better way of performing hyperlink tests that do not reduce the performance of other existing methods at the same time, as listed in the blog post webkit.org In fact, Mozilla has supported API sendBeacon and the reason we cannot enable ping hyperlink attribute is because the feature is not completed yet and ready to be deployed on the rules. large scale ".

When asked if it feels that users should at least be provided with the ability to disable this feature if they want to, Mozilla claims that they don't think doing so will bring any "significant improvements." meaning "to the privacy of the user.

"We do not believe that providing the option to disable this feature will bring any meaningful improvements to ensuring user privacy, simply because websites can (and often done) discover different supported mechanisms for checking hyperlinks in each browser, and disabling more user-friendly mechanisms will only make web pages turn around. use mechanisms that are less user-friendly, and still do not really disable hyperlink checking. "

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Brave claims to continue blocking this feature

After Mozilla's response, a lot of attention also turned to Brave Software to confirm whether the browser has any plans to enable hyperlink checking in their browser. And here is the answer of Catherine Corre, Head of Communications at Brave Software:

'Disabling hyperlink checking is an important security feature and Brave always turns it off by default'.

What do you think about the decisions of Firefox and Brave? Leave comments in the comment section below!