Added privacy features on Firefox

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Mozilla engineers have added a mechanism to Firefox 52 that prevents websites from fingerprinting users using system fonts.

The user privacy protection system was borrowed from the Tor Browser, where a similar mechanism blocks websites from identifying users based on the fonts installed on their computers.

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The feature has been active in the Tor Browser for some time and will become active in the stable branch of Firefox 52, scheduled for release on March 7, 2017.

The font fingerprinting protection is already active in Firefox 52 Beta.

Back in July 2016, Mozilla engineers started the Tor Uplift project, which aims to improve Firefox's privacy features with the ones present in the Tor Browser.

A month later, with the release of Firefox 48, Mozilla took its first step in this direction by blocking a list of URLs known to host fingerprinting scripts.

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Awesome, I cant wait to upgrade. Protection against fingerprinting is something that I think is desperately needed. This is an awesome first step, especially considering how Identifying fonts can be (especially if you use a Linux as a desktop environment, and therefore have a odd set of fonts). I hope more is done in the future to curb fingerprinting. In the meantime I might be switching to dev build just for this feature.

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That is the nice thing about Libre software. Good ideas spread easily.

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I welcome this. They should implement more from the tor browser.

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Looking forward to this new release of Firefox.
Hopefully they also improve java applet support.
Because the current 50 and 51 versions dont work all that well with certain browser games.

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Doesn't protect against remote fonts :)

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Good that a privacy issue will be patched. What other fingerprinting vulnerabilities remain?

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Which browser games are even worth playing? Genuinely asking!