X

Latest Firefox browser shows who's tracking you, because we all care about privacy now

Firefox’s new privacy-reporting tool lets you see the cookies, trackers and fingerprinters monitoring you across the web.

Clifford Colby Managing Editor
Clifford is a managing editor at CNET, where he leads How-To coverage. He spent a handful of years at Peachpit Press, editing books on everything from the first iPhone to Python. He also worked at a handful of now-dead computer magazines, including MacWEEK and MacUser. Unrelated, he roots for the Oakland A's.
Expertise Tech from browser security to password managers and government programs from mail-in voting to federal assistance
Clifford Colby
2 min read
firefox-68

If you're serious about protecting your information online, Firefox and its collection of privacy tools can guard your personal data as you browse websites. 

By default now, Mozilla's Firefox web browser for Windows and MacOS will protect you from trackers that gather your browsing history, cross-site tracking cookies that follow you from site to site (and is how ads follow you around), cryptominers that secretly use your device's resources to mine cryptocurrency and fingerprinters that uniquely identify you based on your device, settings and apps.

But much of the work that Firefox does on your privacy's behalf happens in the background, so to shine a light on the lengths that sites go to track you online, Firefox now comes with a privacy report that gives you a real-time view into how frequently websites try to gather information about you without your consent. Here's how to use Firefox's new Privacy Protection report.

How to use Firefox's privacy report

The report shows you the trackers, cookies, fingerprinters and cryptominers Firefox is guarding against. 

1. Make sure you're on Firefox 70 (you can download it if you don't have it).

firefoxreport.png

See exactly which trackers, cookies and other items Firefox is blocking.

Screenshot Clifford Colby / CNET

2. In the address bar, click the shield over on the left. (The shield will be be dark gray if Firefox doesn't detect trackers on the page and a purple-blue if it's blocking anything.)

3. In the "Blocked" area, tap a label to see exactly which trackers, cookies and other items Firefox has blocked on that web page from tracking you.

4. Down toward the bottom, tap Protection Settings to manage how Firefox protects you.

5. And then at the very bottom, tap Show Report to view a day-by-day report of trackers Firefox has blocked.

For more on Firefox and privacy, see our guide on Mozilla's browser. And for even more on privacy, see our guide for putting an end to robocalls for good.