Firefox has added protections against browser fingerprinting, a form of cookie-free tracking that combines details such as fonts, screen size and graphics hardware to recognize people across websites. Mozilla researchers studied which browser measurements most effectively distinguish users, simulating techniques used by Fingerprint Pro, Signifyd and Akamai against data from nearly 25 million Firefox users. To protect participants, requests were routed through encrypted relays that separated IP addresses from measurement contents; individual records were later deleted, leaving only aggregate results. The work, accepted for presentation at the 2026 Computer and Communications Security conference, is accompanied by a public test suite and research materials.
The study found that changing a small number of browser features can make fingerprints substantially less precise. Firefox now limits screen-resolution details that could reveal a taskbar or dock, rounds reported processor counts, and makes image rendering, Web Audio and Android calculations more consistent. Evaluation showed fewer users had unique fingerprints and more shared fingerprints with larger groups. These changes preserve practical settings such as language and timezone, but do not prevent fingerprinting or stop trackers from adapting. Some protections are on by default; others are available in Private Browsing or Strict Enhanced Tracking Protection, which users can enable for all windows. Mozilla presents open research as a way to target effective changes while keeping everyday websites functional, alongside other Firefox privacy tools such as Total Cookie Protection, Relay and VPN.
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