Mozilla plans to enable cookie banner blocking in Firefox 120, but initially only in Germany. Other regions will follow at later point in time. Firefox users may, however, enable the blocking already.
Many websites display cookie consent banners to users. These banners give website visitors a choice regarding the use of cookies.
Cookies are data that websites may save on the local system. The sites may read the data in future visits. Cookies are useful, as they may keep the user signed-in or store preferences. Cookies are also used for tracking purposes.
The rise of cookie banners coincided with new regulatory laws in the European Union, California and some other regions. The main idea was to put users in control again in regards to cookies.
What was once thought of as a good idea turned into a huge annoyance for users. More or less all websites display cookie banners to users now, which often means that users have to interact with these banners frequently.
It is an annoyance, especially since there is no “don’t allow” default option that the browser sends automatically. Users who delete cookies regularly will get these banners in each browsing session.
Firefox 120: cookie banners be gone
Mozilla plans to introduce automation in Firefox 120 in Germany to block cookie banners and select “decline” whenever possible. The web browser will block cookie banners that include an option to refuse all but necessary cookies.
It should be clear that users will continue to see cookie banners. There is no standard for showing them to users and sites may use third-party scripts or custom scripts for the functionality.
Still, Firefox 120 will block common cookie banners, which should reduce the number of banners that users see while using the browser.
How to enable cookie banner blocking in Firefox
Mozilla plans to launch the feature in Germany only, but all Firefox users may configure the browser to block banners. I mentioned this back in 2022 on Ghacks.
- Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
- Use the search field at the top to find cookiebanners.service.mode.
- Change the value of the preference to 1.
- Change the value of cookiebanners.service.mode.privateBrowsing to 1 as well. This enables the functionality in the private browsing mode.
- Restart Firefox.
The preference supports three values:
- 0 — disables the feature. In other words, no cookie banners are blocked.
- 1 — blocks all known cookie banners and does nothing otherwise.
- 2 — blocks all known cookie banners and accepts any cookie banner otherwise.
Dealing with cookies
Tracking is severely limited if third-party cookies are blocked in the browser. Other options include deleting cookies and site data regularly.
Firefox ships with tracking protection functionality. While not as good as a true content blocker, such as uBlock Origin, it is better than nothing.
Blocking third-party cookies is a good idea to reduce tracking. Firefox makes this a bit complicated, as it does not offer a simple switch to turn off third-party cookies like Chromium-based browsers do.
- Load about:preferences#privacy in the browser’s address bar.
- Select the Custom option under Enhanced Tracking Protection.
- In the cookies menu, select “All cross-site cookies (may cause websites to break)”.
This blocks third-party cookies in the browser. Note that some, very few, sites may not work properly with this setting.
Closing Words
Several browsers deal with cookie banners automatically. Brave Browser has a cookie consent blocking feature and so does Vivaldi Browser.
Mozilla is a bit late to the party, but better late than never, especially if the feature improves usability. Firefox 120 will be released on November 21, 2023.
Now You: how do you deal with cookie banners? (via Sören Hentzschel)
Here (Firefox 115.3.1 ESR), together with the ‘uBlock Origin’ extension I run the ‘I still don’t care about cookies’ dedicated extension. No cookie consent interference since then and until now.
Browser is set to block 3rd-party cookies : pref(“network.cookie.cookieBehavior”, 1);
Content blocking category is ‘custom’ : pref(“browser.contentblocking.category”, “custom”);
First-Party Isolation (FPI) is activated : pref(“privacy.firstparty.isolate”, true);
Hence Firefox’s Total Cookie Protection (TCP) is disabled.
Have been proceeding this way since always. In fact my whole Cookie policy is built FPI : should I disable it that I’d had to revert to several default prefs accordingly. FPI is powerful yet has been incriminated for creating issues on domains which required cross-site authorizations and, let’s say it frankly, mainly Google services, which I avoid.