{"id":32001,"date":"2021-03-27T17:22:32","date_gmt":"2021-03-27T21:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=32001"},"modified":"2021-03-27T17:23:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-27T21:23:13","slug":"firefoxs-smartblock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/27\/firefoxs-smartblock\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefox&rsquo;s SmartBlock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/security\/2021\/03\/23\/introducing-smartblock\/\">Thomas Wisniewski<\/a> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=26565780\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/security\/2021\/03\/23\/introducing-smartblock\/\"><p>In building these extra-strong privacy protections in Private Browsing windows and Strict Mode, we have been confronted with a fundamental problem: introducing a policy that outright blocks trackers on the web inevitably risks blocking components that are essential for some websites to function properly. This can result in images not appearing, features not working, poor performance, or even the entire page not loading at all.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>To reduce this breakage, Firefox 87 is now introducing a new privacy feature we are calling SmartBlock. SmartBlock intelligently fixes up web pages that are broken by our tracking protections, without compromising user privacy.<\/p>\n<p>SmartBlock does this by providing local stand-ins for blocked third-party tracking scripts. These stand-in scripts behave <i>just<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>This sounds like quite a different approach from Safari&rsquo;s Intelligent Tracking Prevention. SmartBlock apparently uses a static list of trackers, whereas Safari tries to learn (on device) what to block. So Firefox may be more reliable with known bad actors, whereas Safari may catch more of the long tail but be less consistent from one device to another. SmartBlock tries to prevent breaking sites by substituting stand-in scripts, whereas Safari loads the trackers but segregates the data. So it&rsquo;s possible that Firefox will break some sites if the stand-in scripts don&rsquo;t behave properly, but it should provide better performance and use less bandwidth. On the other hand, some sites don&rsquo;t work in Safari unless you turn off ITP.<\/p>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/22\/firefoxs-new-referrer-policy\/\">Firefox&rsquo;s New Referrer Policy<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/24\/information-leaks-via-safaris-intelligent-tracking-prevention\/\">Information Leaks via Safari&rsquo;s Intelligent Tracking Prevention<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/11\/the-success-of-intelligent-tracking-prevention\/\">The Success of Intelligent Tracking Prevention<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/12\/safaris-intelligent-tracking-prevention\/\">Safari&rsquo;s Intelligent Tracking Prevention<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thomas Wisniewski (via Hacker News): In building these extra-strong privacy protections in Private Browsing windows and Strict Mode, we have been confronted with a fundamental problem: introducing a policy that outright blocks trackers on the web inevitably risks blocking components that are essential for some websites to function properly. This can result in images not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2021-03-27T21:22:35Z","apple_news_api_id":"ea0df935-ec6b-43fa-950c-f2c68b064753","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-03-27T21:23:17Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A6g35NexrQ_qVDPLGiwZHUw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[279,30,32,1891,355,103,96],"class_list":["post-32001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-firefox","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-macos-11-0","tag-privacy","tag-safari","tag-web"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32003,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32001\/revisions\/32003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}