WSJ "What They Know" Series: The Ultimate Tracking Cookie
We like to divide up our online world into good guys and bad guys. Mozilla, clearly one of the good ones, right? It’s non-profit, the anti-Microsoft, groovy and granolaesque still, though it’s grown to a 23% market share in browsers.
“Hiding Online Footprints,” by the Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Angwin and Spencer Ante lays out how Mozilla inserted anti-tracking cookie killers into its latest browser, and then removed them. Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering at Mozilla, had plausible explanations for the moves, but the point of this web on web journalism is that we’re getting to see inside the cookie war, in-depth. The reporting is part of the “What They Know” series done by Angwin, Emily Steel, Jennifer Valentino-Devries, Jessica Vascellaro, Steve Stecklow, Tom McGinty and others. It’s a must-read primer for anyone in the digital business — and Pulitzer bait for explanatory reporting — exploring the swift-moving world of digital tracking, and its implications.