How to prevent Firefox from showing you ads in its new address bar

“No shady privacy policy or backdoor for advertisers. Just a super-fast browser that doesn’t sell you. This is the quote you see from Mozilla when you first download Firefox. The company is touted as the best choice to protect you while browsing the internet, but a recent update suggests that Mozilla could go back on its word, at least a little.

Here is the trick: NOTanybody love ads. They can be intrusive, irrelevant, too much relevant, and can look a bit gooey in the wrong context. On the other hand, advertisements are what keeps much of the internet free. You didn’t have to pay to read this article; the ads you see support that click. You can play thousands of games for free on your phone because pop-ups allow developers to work. It’s just the nature of the Internet.

Most of us can live with this to some extent. What’s not cool is when the ads are presented to us in a sneaky or obnoxious way. Until recently, Samsung users were forced to see advertisements when using the built-in weather app on their phone. Meanwhile, Waze shows you advertisements for nearby locations whenever you stop at a red light. Believe it or not, I don’t want to take a 10 minute detour to Wendy’s every stop.

Firefox now displays ads in the address bar

This brings us back to Mozilla. Firefox is about not selling yourself in order to maximize ad exposure. The company takes pride in that Firefox blocks cookies by default, prevents social trackers from tracking your activity, and generally blocks more items than other browsers. And yet, with an update, you go from a normal private address bar experience to one that shows you ads as you type.

It looks like this new “feature” is part of Firefox version 92. If you just don’t update, you won’t see it on your browser (I didn’t see it when I first opened Firefox today), but it’s not a durable solution. . You should be able to update your browser to take advantage of the new features and bug fixes without worrying about these ads.

How to turn off address bar ads in Firefox

Fortunately, it’s easy to turn off these ads if you know where to look. Open Firefox settings, then click the “Privacy and Securitytab “. Now sgo down to Address bar – Firefox Suggest. Here you will see a new option at the bottom of the list, “Contextual suggestions, “with a new sub-option,”Include occasional sponsored suggestions. This last option is responsible for delivering announcements when you type in the address bar.

To prevent these ads from appearing, you can simply turn off “Include occasional sponsored suggestions. “With this option turned off, you should never see any ads displayed in the address bar. However, feel free to turn off the parent option.”Contextual suggestions”Also, if you don’t want Firefox to suggest websites and search for you.