Mozilla introduces Track THIS, a new tool that will create fake browsing history and fool advertisers

Most of us somewhere worry about our activities getting tracked on the internet, remember the last time you got the ads based on your interests or based on your browsing history and you start thinking as to ‘if at all I am getting tracked’?

Most of our activities are getting tracked by the web through cookies that make a note of things such as language preferences, websites visited by the user and much more. But the problem gets doubled when even data brokers and advertising networks use these cookies to collect user information without the consent. In this case, users need to have control over what advertisers know about them.

This month the team at Mozilla Firefox announced the Enhanced Tracking Protection that is by default in flagship Firefox Quantum browser against third-party cookies. In addition to this two days ago, the team also announced the launch of a project called Track THIS, a tool that can help you fool the advertisers.

Track THIS opens up 100 tabs that are crafted to fit a specific character which includes a hypebeast, a filthy rich person, a doomsday prepper, or an influencer.

The users’ browsing history will be depersonalized in a way that advertisers will struggle targeting ads to the users as the tool will confuse them.

Track This will show users the ads for the products that they might not be interested in, users will still continue to see ads but not the targeted ones.

The official blog post reads, “Let’s be clear, though. This will show you ads for products you might not be interested in at all, so it’s really just throwing off brands who want to advertise to a very specific type of person. You’ll still be seeing ads. And eventually, if you just use the internet as you typically would day to day, you’ll start seeing ads again that align more closely to your normal browsing habits. If you’d rather straight-up block third-party tracking cookies, go ahead and get Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox.”

Let’s now understand the working of Track THIS

Before trying Track THIS, users need to manage their tabs and save their work or they can open up a new window or browser to start the process. Track THIS will itself open 100 tabs.

Users then need to choose a profile to trick advertisers into thinking that a user is someone else

Users need to confirm that they are ready to open 100 tabs based on that profile.

Users then need to close all 100 tabs and open up a new window. The ads will only be impacted for a few days but ad trackers can soon start reflecting users’ normal browsing habits.

Once done with experimenting, users can get Firefox with Enhanced Tracking Protection to block third-party tracking cookies by default.

It seems users are excited about this news as they will be able to get rid of targeted advertisements.

https://twitter.com/minnakank/status/1143863045447458816

https://twitter.com/inthecompanyof/status/1143842275476299776

Few users are scared of using the tool on their phones and are a little skeptical about the 100 tabs. A user commented on HackerNews, “I'm really afraid to click one of those links on mobile. Does it just spawn 100 new tabs?”

Another user commented, “Not really sure that a browser should allow a site to open 100 tabs programmatically, if anything this is telling me that Firefox is open to such abuse.”

To know more about this news, check out the official blog post.

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Mozilla introduces Track THIS, a new tool that will create fake browsing history and fool advertisers

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