Firefox 74 has an official Facebook Container add-on that keeps the social media juggernaut from tracking your browsing activity around the web. It can automatically block any of Facebook’s trackers when outside of Facebook to boost your privacy online.
How Firefox’s Facebook Container Works
The Facebook Container works by isolating your Facebook activity into an entirely separate instance of your browser, which Firefox calls a container. When you install Facebook Container, the Firefox extension deletes your Facebook cookies, logs you out of the site, and closes any open Facebook tabs. This is a free browser extension made by Mozilla itself.
Once it’s activated, you’re free to navigate to Facebook as usual. When you do, you’ll see a blue line underneath any Firefox tab. This indicates that the container is active. Everything Facebook-related inside that container is allowed. Everything Facebook-related outside that container is blocked. Any non-Facebook links you click within the container will open in a normal Firefox browser tab, outside of the Facebook Container.
Any website that requires a Facebook login, or otherwise accesses its content, will not function properly if at all. This is the add-on’s precise purpose: to stop any Facebook-related activity from bothering you or tracking you during your normal browsing activity.
Remember: This add-on doesn’t do anything with the information Facebook already has, nor does it interfere with Facebook’s machinations within the container. Also, this add-on might conflict with the Multi-Account Container add-on, which lets you put one or more websites of your choice into a similar container. You can use color-coded tabs to operate on different websites without trackers, or in multiple instances of the same website with the same account.
How to Install and Activate Facebook Container
Visit the Facebook Container page on the Mozilla Add-Ons site in Firefox to install it. Alternatively, navigate to “addons.mozilla.org” in Firefox and search for “Facebook Container.” Once you’re on this page, click “Add to Firefox.”
An “Add Facebook Container” prompt will appear. Click “Add.”
You can see whether or not the tab has the Facebook Container active by looking for the black line under the text of the tab.
How to Add Exceptions
The container isolates your Facebook activity in a special part of your browser. Facebook can’t track your browsing activity via Facebook buttons on other websites. However, you might sometimes want to interact with your Facebook account on a different website.
If you want to exclude a site from these restrictions, you can add that website as an exception and allow it to interact with Facebook. To do this, navigate Firefox to that website. Click the Facebook Container icon and select “Allow Site In Facebook Container.”
Click “Allow,” and the page will refresh with this new setting in place.
With these settings in place, Firefox can provide you with a browsing experience that doesn’t throw new ads at you based on what you last looked at on Facebook.
