As you surely must be aware by now, Facebook has been in trouble lately over what’s come to be known as the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In a nutshell, it meant millions of people had their data sold to a third party and used against them.
In light of these revelations, there have been calls for everyone to delete Facebook. However, Mozilla, the company which makes Firefox, has developed an alternative called the Facebook Container extension. Which should stop Facebook tracking you.
Isolating Facebook From Everything Else
As egregious as it was to learn that the data Facebook collects can end up being used to win elections, it’s the fact that this data was collected in the first place that should worry us all. Especially as most of us consent to Facebook collecting this data.
As explained in a post on the Mozilla Blog, Mozilla hopes to limit the amount of data we’re voluntarily sharing with Facebook. It can do this by isolating your use of Facebook to a separate container, preventing Facebook from tracking you across the rest of the web.
We made a new add-on for @firefox called Facebook Container in response to the growing demand we see for tools that help manage privacy and security.https://t.co/WENIuspEA2
— Mozilla (@mozilla) March 27, 2018
All you need to do is install the Facebook Container extension. When you do so you’ll be logged out of Facebook, and your cookies will be deleted. From then on, every time you visit Facebook it will open in a container tab isolated from your other tabs.
While this can’t stop Facebook from knowing everything, it will stop the social network tracking you via third-party cookies. Mozilla itself doesn’t collect data from the Facebook Container extension; just how many times it has been installed and uninstalled.
A Viable Alternative to Deleting Facebook
I think we can all understand people’s desire to delete Facebook at this juncture. It’s what Zuckerberg and co. deserve. However, there are plenty of reasons not to delete Facebook, and with the Facebook Container extension, Mozilla has given Firefox users an alternative.
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