Firefox Update Introduces ‘SmartBlock’ That Fixes Websites Broken By Privacy Protections

If you have used ad blockers and tracking blockers, you might have encountered instances where a website seems to load incorrectly or not at all. This is because the blockers you have in place might have some compatibility issues with certain web elements, or certain elements are blocked as they might be thought of as being an ad or tracker.

Mozilla understands that this can be annoying which is why in the latest Firefox update, they have introduced what they are calling “SmartBlock”. According to the company, this is a feature of Firefox that attempts to fix websites that might have been broken by its blocking and anti-tracking tools, while at the same time maintaining the user’s privacy.

According to Mozilla, “SmartBlock does this by providing local stand-ins for blocked third-party tracking scripts. These stand-in scripts behave just enough like the original ones to make sure that the website works properly. They allow broken sites relying on the original scripts to load with their functionality intact.”

The company adds, “The SmartBlock stand-ins are bundled with Firefox: no actual third-party content from the trackers are loaded at all, so there is no chance for them to track you this way. And, of course, the stand-ins themselves do not contain any code that would support tracking functionality.” So if you have had experiences where a page doesn’t load correctly because of these protections, then you’ll want to update to the latest version of Firefox.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Firefox, Mozilla, Privacy