Mozilla offers enhanced privacy feature in pre-beta version of FireFox

Many browsers come with a private mode feature to prevent others from learning too much about the web habits of users, preventing the sites themselves from tracking what one was doing could not be helped. But Mozilla has some ideas, it seems.

The company released a pre-beta version of Firefox whose updated, experimental Private Browsing mode blocked web elements that could track one's behaviour, such as analytic tools and social network services.

While the measure would definitely not be to the liking of website operators, Mozilla reckoned that it was ultimately better to keep users off sites' radars by default.

In case users ran into problems, there was a central control area where they tweak could tweak their privacy and security settings.

That was not the only test being conducted. The pre-beta also enforced add-on verification by default, so that social plugin one downloaded should not add unwanted toolbars, inject ads or collect more data than it should.

Like with Chrome, this filter could be turned off by the user. Users who want to try either of these features right away, should to grab this early Firefox build now as it would the engineers at Mozilla came out with a finished version.

For the first time, Private Browsing would feature a control centre that allowed users to unblock elements that the mode had blocked, on a granular basis, in case the 'present buying site' one was browsing was preventing access to the site.

The preview edition also featured the default activation of add-on approval checks. Non-approved add-ons would be rejected, but could be overridden manually if trusted by the user.

Mozilla explained, "Add-ons may have the ability to create unwanted toolbars or buttons, collect information, change your search settings or inject ads or malware into your device. We've worked with developers and created a process that attempts to verify that add-ons installed in Firefox meet the guidelines and criteria we've developed to ensure they're safer for you."

The features offer a glimpse into the future and were being rolled out 'as is' in order to get feedback and bug reports. They would, in time, progress to the beta, and then the main browser.

Mozilla has also trialed plans for parental controls, extra communication methods via Firefox Hello, and the much touted Firefox for iOS, but it had not given any further details given about those just yet.