Firefox 88 was released on Monday, and among the changes the new version brings is a change to how the browser handles the window.name property.
Previously, this property worked throughout the life of a tab, which means that as a user moved from one site to another, the value in the property remained and data from one site could be read by another.
“Surveillance companies are abusing this feature to leak information and have effectively turned it into a communication channel for transferring data between websites,” says technician Tim Huang, in a blog post.
"Even worse, malicious websites were able to monitor the content of window.name to collect personal data of users who had accidentally leaked it from another site."
With the new version, Firefox will delete the property when switching between sites, and when a user returns to a site, the window.name value will be restored.
"Together, these dual rules for clearing and restoring window.name data restrict this data to the site where it was originally created, just as Firefox Total Cookie Protection restricts cookies to the site where it was created," Huang said.
"This restriction is necessary to prevent leaks from malicious websites that used window.name to collect users' personal data."
George is still wondering what he is doing here….
