Facebook is facing scrutiny from governments and consumers alike as the Cambridge Analytica scandal unfolds and the company faces more scrutiny. And the theft of 50 million profiles is indeed a point of concern, but more alarming to many is how Facebook tracks us across the web. Fortunately, Firefox has a solution; namely bottling Facebook up.
The Mozilla Foundation, which runs Firefox, has rolled out a browser extension called the “Facebook Container.” It’s pretty much all there in the name: When you open Facebook, it has a special blue tab, and when you do something away from the Facebook site, it loads that in the blue tab instead. This limits Facebook’s ability to track you across the internet, although it’s not perfect. After all, you’re still giving them data if you’re using Facebook, at all.
And this wouldn’t have prevented the Cambridge Analytica leak, to be fair. That was a breach caused in part by defective data practices on the part of Facebook. Still, most people are looking for a measure of control over a site they think has taken an outsized chunk of their privacy, and, if you run Firefox, or are willing to migrate to it, the container might be a good solution for limiting it.
(via The Verge)