Mozilla’s new Firefox add-on stops Facebook tracking your online habits

By Tom Warren
Mar 27, 2018, 9:00am EDT

Mozilla is capitalizing on the recent fears over Facebook privacy and data by creating a new Firefox extension that stops Facebook from tracking your online habits. The new “Facebook Container” creates a blue-colored browser tab that isolates your Facebook session from the rest of your web activity. It’s designed to prevent Facebook from collecting what sites you visit, and targeting you with ads and other messages.

If you click a link on Facebook it will simply load in a new tab that’s isolated from the Facebook Container, and if you click Facebook share buttons on any other sites then it will load them within the special blue tab. While Mozilla’s new extension wouldn’t have prevented the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it will stop Facebook from tracking users outside of its own platform as you won’t be logged in to Facebook and seeing its share buttons and trackers on regular websites.

Facebook’s ad tracking technology allows the company to know when you’ve been shopping for items and present ads for those products directly on Facebook. It can be an irritating experience, especially if you’re shopping for a surprise present for a family member and the item keeps getting displayed over and over in your Facebook news feed.

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