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In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mozilla have recommended the Firefox browser "Facebook Container" add-on to wall off Facebook activities, in a bid to attract privacy conscious users of the social network. The Firefox add-on makes it harder for the social network to track users once they leave the platform, as it isolates the users' Facebook identity from the rest of their web activity.

Albeit, the typical nature of data in the Cambridge Analytica incident would not have been prevented by the Facebook Container add-on, but tons of other data are being collected on the network, and by giving users a choice to limit what they share in a way that is under their control is important.

Once installed, the Facebook Container will continue to allow you use Facebook normally, and Facebook will continue to deliver their service to you and send you advertising. But it will be much harder for Facebook to use your activity collected off Facebook to send you ads and other targeted messages.

The solution it offers doesn’t mean users will stop using the social network service that's valuable to them. Instead, it avails users tools that help them protect themselves from the unexpected effects of their usage of the service.

The container concept is that as all cookies are stored in one memory location by the browser; Mozilla's extension sets up multiple "cookie jars," or storage locations, and thus prevents one site from recognizing and reading cookies recorded by other URLs.

So if a site is opened in one Container, "cookies set on that container cannot follow the user to other sites visited in non-container tabs or other containers," stated Mozilla in a backgrounder about the container technology.

To learn more about how the Facebook Container Add-On works, check out the Firefox Frontier Blog.

Mozilla pitches 'Facebook Container' add-on to Privacy conscious users of the Social network



In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mozilla have recommended the Firefox browser "Facebook Container" add-on to wall off Facebook activities, in a bid to attract privacy conscious users of the social network. The Firefox add-on makes it harder for the social network to track users once they leave the platform, as it isolates the users' Facebook identity from the rest of their web activity.

Albeit, the typical nature of data in the Cambridge Analytica incident would not have been prevented by the Facebook Container add-on, but tons of other data are being collected on the network, and by giving users a choice to limit what they share in a way that is under their control is important.

Once installed, the Facebook Container will continue to allow you use Facebook normally, and Facebook will continue to deliver their service to you and send you advertising. But it will be much harder for Facebook to use your activity collected off Facebook to send you ads and other targeted messages.

The solution it offers doesn’t mean users will stop using the social network service that's valuable to them. Instead, it avails users tools that help them protect themselves from the unexpected effects of their usage of the service.

The container concept is that as all cookies are stored in one memory location by the browser; Mozilla's extension sets up multiple "cookie jars," or storage locations, and thus prevents one site from recognizing and reading cookies recorded by other URLs.

So if a site is opened in one Container, "cookies set on that container cannot follow the user to other sites visited in non-container tabs or other containers," stated Mozilla in a backgrounder about the container technology.

To learn more about how the Facebook Container Add-On works, check out the Firefox Frontier Blog.
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