It doesn’t do a lot of the complex things a full browser does in order to do carry out the privacy function to a high degree. Lacking the ability to run multiple tabs, Focus is completely stripped down, more like a search bar than a browser. The answer is simplicity, which perhaps explains its name. The larger question is why Mozilla has opted to do this in a new browser when the mobile version of Firefox already does this minus the ad-blocking (and you can add a number of ad-blocking extensions to the existing Android version of Firefox if you want to). Alternatively, you can use dedicated anonymity networks such as Tor. It will stop advertising tracking and erase what was viewed on the device itself but it won’t (and was not intended to) stop ISPs from recording which websites are visited from a given IP address.Īvoiding ISP surveillance requires a privacy-oriented VPN, which might (we are speculating here) be something browser companies such as Mozilla could offer in future versions of whatever Focus evolves into. This is good for privacy because websites and ad systems can’t record what users are doing, and it’s good for performance because users aren’t slowed down while these systems communicate with remote servers.įocus, therefore, is about privacy and speed, but it is not an anonymity shield. This has now been launched for Android users.īut don’t most browsers on desktop and mobile already have a privacy mode? And do these privacy modes amount to much anyway?įocus does two things: it blocks ad tracking systems very reliably, which also means that it functions as an ad-blocker of sorts. Last November Mozilla added its name to the roster with the Focus browser, an iOS app designed to run private searches without leaving a trace on the device. Websites and advertisers silently watch every move to build user profiles – and that’s before you get to legally required ISP monitoring on behalf of the government in countries such as the UK.Ī partial shield is to use a privacy browser, an expanding and some times baffling array of which are available for desktop and, increasingly, mobile users. Browsing the internet without advertising what you’re looking at is no easy task.

Firefox focus