A little bit more privacy from both Chrome and Firefox

Both Chrome and Mozilla will bring more privacy for their users. Chrome v.90, which arrives in April, will lead users to a secure HTTPS connection, by default. Also, Mozilla announced Firefox 87, with a new intelligent tracker blocking mechanism.

A natural shift to more privacy

At this moment, when users type a web address in the www.awebsite.com/net/org etc form, Chrome chooses “http://”, The same thing happens in Edge, Mozilla, Safari or Brave.

It was the norm until three years ago, when most web pages had not any security certificates installed. Nevertheless, nowadays most of them rely on secure connections.

Now, Chrome 90 will make HTTPS the default for first time website visits. According to a blog post on Chromium.org, this will also bring more benefits. Thus, it will speed up the load of websites as they will get rid of the redirection time from http:// to https://.

The explanations came from Mustafa Emre Acer and Shweta Panditrao, software engineers. Still, there will be a few exceptions: reserved host names, IP addresses and single label domains.

Also, Mozilla released Firefox 87 and came with information about it. So, this comes with a new intelligent tracker blocking mechanism, called SmartBlock. The new feature works in Firefox Private Browsing and Strict Mode.

SmartBlock stops third-party scripts and content when they come from known cross-site tracking companies. Also, it should improve users’ browsing experience by fixing those pages that the browser tracking protections breaks.

The effect on users

According to Mozilla, SmartBlock blocks tracking scripts and also tries to solve the delay or errors that affect performance. These can arise because of meddling with the code of the web pages.

So, according to Thomas Wisniewski, web compatibility engineer for Mozilla, SmartBlock provides “local stand-ins for blocker third-party tracking scripts.” Firefox 87 brings one more privacy enhancement. Thus, it will limit the information in the referrer.

All these things mean improved data protection for users, more secure interned connections and a cleaner web.