The recent involvement of Facebook in the data misuse scandal raised many an eyebrow within a very short span. The uproar was so big that it led to the #DeleteFacebook movement on social media to boycott Facebook entirely. While there are many people, including prominent persons such as Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and Brian Acton, vouching for the total castigation of the social media website, there are several others who just can’t or don’t want to give up Facebook yet.
We have already detailed how you can secure your private data from being accessed by the third-party websites and apps associated with Facebook. However, if you think our step-by-step guide is too much to do, a popular web browser company has come up with a much easier tool to curb the extensive sharing of your personal information with Facebook.
Mozilla has developed a new web browser extension that ‘makes it harder to track your activity on other websites via third-party cookies’. The add-on is called Facebook Container Extension and it will only work on Mozilla Firefox browsers, both on desktops and mobile phones. What it essentially does is isolate your sensitive information in a separate container that is out of Facebook’s reach.
How does Facebook Container Extension work?
As soon as you install the Facebook Container Extension, you will be logged out of your Facebook account deleting all your cookies and history. The next time you open Facebook in Firefox browser, a separate blue coloured browser tab will open within the Container. Next, you log into your account and use Facebook normally, however, if you click on non-Facebook links, you will get out of the container. Clicking on Facebook Share button on other websites will open the tab within the container, however, Mozilla explains in the add-on description that pressing Share buttons passes information to Facebook about the website that you shared from.
While this container is effectively built to work on the Facebook platform, there are certain features that won’t work properly. The Facebook Comments and Like buttons that are usually embedded on other websites will not work inside the container. In addition, the websites that have Facebook logins will ‘generally not work properly’. Mozilla says that it does not store any Facebook information via the Facebook Container Extension, however, it does record the number of times the extension is installed or removed.
