Firefox 70
www.firefox.com What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10
Privacy has been at the heart of recent Firefox updates, and this trend continues with the introduction of a new Privacy Protections report (see 1 below for how to access it). This report displays how many online trackers Firefox has blocked over the past seven days (in just 30 minutes of browsing, it blocked over 1,000 on our computer). Firefox also now blocks social-media trackers, which prevents the likes of Facebook and Twitter from keeping tabs on your web activity. Scroll further down the report and you can sign-up for alerts if your email address has been the subject of a data breach. Firefox uses the popular Haveibeenpwned service ( www.haveibeenpwned.com) to provide these alerts.
If you want stronger protection you can switch from Firefox’s Standard protection to Strict (see 3 below). Doing this prevents fingerprinting, where web tracking companies attempt to obtain detailed information about your computer (including its software and hardware) to build a detailed profile, which they can then sell on to advertisers. Although we didn’t experience any problems using Strict mode, Firefox warns this high level of protection can stop some websites from loading properly, so you may want to only turn it on when visiting a site you’re particularly wary of.
Aside from privacy, version 70 also promises to speed up your browsing. Don’t get too excited, though, as Firefox only claims up to eight per cent faster page-load times. We tested the previous version of Firefox alongside this release, but there was no noticeable difference – even browser benchmark testing showed very similar results. Website load times are most affected by adverts, and because Firefox doesn’t block ads as standard we recommend installing a free extension such as Adblock Plus ( www.snipca.com/33086).