These days, you may wish you had a magic switch you could flip to keep your data more secure. The misuse of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica is only the latest consumer privacy flap to create outrage. Remember the Equifax hack? That affected more than 230 million people. And in 2017, US lawmakers reversed …
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With Firefox 59, the race is on. Previously, Mozilla’s browser would fetch website data from a cache stored on a PC’s hard drive or SSD. The new version of Firefox, released Tuesday, gets a bit of a speed boost by seeing if it can get that information faster from the network. The feature is part of project called Quantum to …
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Mozilla launched the faster Quantum version of its Firefox browser last fall in a bid to restore the nonprofit’s reach and influence. Now, the leader of that effort has been promoted to oversee all Mozilla products. Mark Mayo, formerly senior vice president of Firefox, is now Mozilla’s chief product officer, CNET has learned. That means he’s taking over more projects, including the …
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Ghostery, a browser extension that blocks advertisers and web publishers from tracking your online behavior, has opened up its code so anyone with some programming chops can see exactly what’s going on. Making Ghostery open-source software — a program anyone can copy, modify and distribute — means it’s now possible for interested outsiders to get involved in its development, said …
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What was once unthinkable — that Chrome would block online ads, Google’s lifeblood — becomes reality on Thursday. That’s when Chrome takes a significant step in the direction that hundreds of millions of us already have gone by installing ad blockers. Chrome stops far short of those browser extensions, which typically ban all ads, but the move carries plenty of …
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Mozilla released on Tuesday a new version of its Firefox Quantum browser, boosting its graphics speed and improving a couple of new technologies designed to make the web more powerful. The browser, version 58, is the first major update since Mozilla’s recovery plan hit full stride in November with the debut of Firefox Quantum. A decade ago, Firefox was running …
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On Wednesday, researchers revealed serious flaws in modern processors that could affect practically every Intel computer released in the last two decades — and the AMD and Arm chips in your laptops, tablets and phones, too. And on May 21, researchers found a fourth variant. Read more here. The good news: Intel, AMD and Arm believe they can fix — …
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Mozilla, the nonprofit behind the Firefox web browser, has cut dozens of staff in its Taiwan office as it shifts its priorities in Asia. Formerly, the Taiwan office supported Mozilla’s broader, global open-source software efforts. Now, it’s making changes so it can “better meet the unique needs of consumers in emerging markets across Asia,” Mozilla said in a statement Thursday. …
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When Firefox 59 is released in March, it will add controls for setting permissions for how the browser accesses your location along with your computer’s camera and microphone. It will also include a global setting for blocking sites from asking to be allowed to send you notifications. These settings will be most welcomed — particularly the ability to shut off …
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Browser maker Brave is handing out about $1 million worth of cryptocurrency-backed tokens it hopes will help build a better online advertising system. Brave developed a technology called the Basic Attention Token (BAT) designed to pay publishers, YouTube contributors and others who today rely on advertising revenue or subscription payments. For now, you can set up Brave to send BATs …
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