Developers from Mozilla borrowed from the browser Tor another function to protect the privacy of users. Starting with the 58th version, Firefox will block attempts to get digital fingerprints using the HTML5 canvas element, according to the Bleeping Computer portal. For a long time, this element was used by advertising companies to track users, and its blocking is a significant improvement in terms of protecting user data.

In recent years, the creation of digital prints using canvas has become very popular, especially after the European Union has obliged websites to display notifications about the use of cookies. Since this method does not involve storing anything in the user's browser, from the legal point of view it is completely legal.

Creation of digital prints occurs as follows. First, the canvas tag is loaded into the hidden iframe element, after which the browser draws several sets of elements and texts. The resulting drawing is converted into a hash. For each computer and browser, the drawing is unique, so the user can track the user's activity on the Internet.

In Tor access sites to data canvas is blocked by default. When a site requests access to an item, a corresponding notification appears in the browser. The same mechanism will appear in Firefox 58, the output of which is scheduled for January 16, 2018.