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Firefox's Optional Tracking Protection Reduces Load Time For News Sites By 44%

Posted by Soulskill on from the definition-of-a-win-win dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Former Mozilla software engineer Monica Chew and Computer Science researcher Georgios Kontaxis recently released a paper (PDF) that examines Firefox's optional Tracking Protection feature. The duo found that with Tracking Protection enabled, the Alexa top 200 news sites saw a 67.5 percent reduction in the number of HTTP cookies set. Furthermore, performance benefits included a 44 percent median reduction in page load time and 39 percent reduction in data usage.

7 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. e-commerce by SumDog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I worked in e-commerce once. Our client had fifteen tracking pixels in the final page of the checkout process! It added a good 10 ~ 20 seconds to that page. That was on top of all the Adobe Omniture garbage.

    I refused to pulled crazy triple shifts after I the Thanksgiving break and was let go. I was so glad. It was totally not worth it and unemployment felt awesome after all that rubbish.

    Also, fuck TOMS shoes!

    1. Re: e-commerce by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What I can not understand is why aren't there a unified solution to provide tracking data to all different underlying tracking systems.

      Because there's more than one set of greedy bastards, each of which have their own branding, and feel they deserve a slice of the pie -- because they all have executives who need hooker and yacht money.

      Are you expecting greedy advertisers to pool their resources so users only see a single greedy embedded in their web pages? Or that somehow having the big giant clearinghouse of everyone's data would somehow be good?

      I have an alternative, block the shit out of all of them, and then nuke the offices of tracking and advertising companies from orbit.

      Just because a bunch of advertising agencies thinks they own the internet doesn't mean we should play along. In fact, we should try to weed them out entirely.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  2. Think that's impressive? by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Add adblocking on top of that and you will double those numbers.

    The advertising industry is ruining the internet.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:Think that's impressive? by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No what will happen is shitty sites full of fluff and click bait will go out of business. Nothing of value will be lost.

  3. A little late by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've already switched to Pale Moon, in part because Pale Moon loads sites much faster. I also benefit from reduced CPU usage, from about 60% to about 15%. Memory usage has also dropped, although less dramatically than CPU usage.

    HELLO FIREFOX!! You started life being the leanest, meanest, most efficient browser in the world! It's time to get back to your roots!

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  4. For anyone else wondering what the hell this is by guises · · Score: 5, Informative

    I had to look this up. For anyone else wondering: this is one of those hidden FIrefox features which is only available to people who know about it ahead of time, through the about:config interface. If you're one of those people who isn't in the club, the boolean you search for is "privacy.trackingprotection.enabled".

    [Insert rant about FIrefox's god-awful UI and severely lacking menu system.]

  5. Seems to work for OSM and Wikipedia by pereric · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, Wikipedia seems to work pretty fine without commercial ads (they do some fundraising sometime). And Open Streetmap seems to do fine, as are the plethora of services built upon it. Sometimes NGO:s and individuals do stuff and share it just because they want it done. Finding sponsorship or donations for the hosting fees are a minor problem then.