Mozilla’s Firefox web browser was the first to implement a Do Not Track option, and now appears to be the first browser to remove it. This option would send a website a request that a user didn’t wish to be tracked, although this was always voluntary. Unfortunately, “many sites do not respect this indication of a person’s privacy preferences, and, in some cases, it can reduce privacy,” making its removal an easy decision for the Firefox team.
The Do Not Track option has already been removed in the latest nightly builds of the browser according to users who run these bleeding edge versions of Firefox. Other users will see the change beginning with version 135 of Firefox, where the checkbox for this option will no longer appear. With this removal, users will now need to make use of the browser’s Global Privacy Control feature to reign in overzealous websites.
Global Privacy Control was introduced in version 120 of Firefox, which is designed to automatically alert websites to not sell or share information about a browsing session on that website. Mozilla is instructing users to utilize this feature to protect their privacy while browsing the web, as Global Privacy Control is respected by an ever growing number of sites and even enforced with legislation in some regions.
To enable Global Privacy Control, users should go to the Privacy & Security panel located within Firefox Settings. There will be a section called Website Privacy Preferences where users can click the “Tell websites not to sell or share my data” option.
It’s unfortunate that Do Not Track didn’t pan out as a way to preserve privacy, but it’s good to see that users do have another option available that might end up being more effective.