Mozilla Firefox’s ‘Facebook Container’ addon keeps Facebook to itself

Non-profit and creator of the Firefox web browser Mozilla this week announced a new addon that will separate your Facebook life from the rest of your browsing activity.

Dubbed the Facebook Container Extension, the addon is a tweaked version of the “multi-account containers” addon, which allowed users to log in to a number of different accounts — say two Google accounts — simultaneously in the same browser.

The Facebook Container Extension however, has a slightly different purpose.

“This extension helps you control more of your web activity from Facebook by isolating your identity into a separate container. This makes it harder for Facebook to track your activity on other websites via third-party cookies,” Mozilla writes in a blog post.

“Rather than stop using a service you find valuable and miss out on those adorable photos of your nephew, we think you should have tools to limit what data others can collect about you.”

In terms of its intended function, the addon is fairly simple to understand.

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When installing it for the first time, it will delete all previous Facebook data kept by the Firefox browser — this includes cache, cookies and logged in sessions.

It will then force Facebook to open in a “a new blue-colored browser tab”, essentially what Mozilla calls a “container tab”.

“In that tab you can login to Facebook and use it like you normally would. If you click on a non-Facebook link or navigate to a non-Facebook website in the URL bar, these pages will load outside of the container,” it adds.

It effectively sandboxes your Facebook activity, and limits it to this particular tab. Users can also browse other websites while this tab is in session, but Facebook features — such as likes, comments and shares — will not function beyond it.

Importantly, for those looking to rid themselves of Facebook entirely, this addon won’t help. You can still use the service, thus spoon data down its throat. But it does go some way to mitigate Facebook’s knowledge of your daily travels across the internet.

Grab the addon here.

Images: Mozilla