Cookies are the primary reason we might be searching for a product on one website, then suddenly see ads for said product on another, and they’re a privacy concern for many. Mozilla addressed this last year by introducing its Total Cookie Protection feature for the Firefox web browser, but it was limited to personal computers. Well, now Android users can take advantage of the same protections as they’ve been added to the Firefox Focus mobile browser, which Mozilla touts as a mobile “companion app.” The way Total Cookie Protection works is relatively straightforward (functionally, at least). The way Mozilla describes it is that most browsers have one large cookie jar that all websites can pull cookies (tracking data) from. Total Cookie Protection organizes all of those cookies so that each website has its own “jar,” which is the only source each site can pull from. So essentially, every website you visit can only track your activity when you’re on that specific website—once you leave, that site can’t see what you do elsewhere. Things are a bit more complicated under the hood as many sites are built around being able to track you and wouldn’t function properly otherwise. But according to Mozilla, additional measures and workarounds are in place to keep everything working while still protecting your privacy. Total Cookie Protection is available now as part of the most recent Android version of Firefox Focus. According to the press release, “Firefox Focus on Android will be the first Firefox mobile browser to have Total Cookie Protection.” Whether or not the feature will make its way to the iOS version of the browser is not mentioned.
