Mozilla, the makers of the Web browser Firefox, announced in February it would begin rejecting cookies from third-party ads by default on the web browser, according to TheVerge.com. However, the company now says it will be holding off on the new patch created by Stanford law student Jonathan Meyer.
Brendan Eich of Mozilla, said in a blog post the patch required additional testing and data in order to ensure its readiness for release:
"The idea is that if you have not visited a site (including the one to which you are navigating currently) and it wants to put a cookie on your computer, the site is likely not one you have heard of or have any relationship with," he said. "But this is only likely, not always true."
According to Reich there were issues concerning false positives and false negatives.
In the case of false positives, there’d be cookies from a commonly visited site blocked due to its multiple addresses. In the case of false negatives an ad could be clicked by accident or a site that was previously trusted began to add cookies.
There is no specific date for release, however Eich says a progress report will be given sometime in the next month and a half.
As expected, advertisers were not big fans of Mozilla’s decision. The ability to block third party cookies has always been an option, however it was not by default. This is the complete opposite of Microsoft, who decided to include its Do Not Track software as a default on Internet Explorer 10 on the Windows 8 setup.
