The Mozilla Foundation today detailed plans to add a set of privacy controls to Firefox that will prevent websites and advertisers from tracking users’ online activity.

Nick Nguyen, the browser maker’s vice president of product, wrote in a blog post that the features will roll out over the coming months. The first capability is set to ship with Firefox 63 in September and will block web trackers that slow page loading times. These delays are typically cited as one of one of the main issues with technology.

Mozilla’s Nguyen pointed to a recent study from Cliqz International GmbH, the company behind the popular Ghostery privacy extension for browsers, that measured the impact of trackers on page performance. It found that disabling them on the 500 highest-ranked websites in the U.S. cuts loading times by more than half.

Mozilla will enable the tracking blocker by default on in Firefox 63, which should translate into an immediate speed boost for users. The next step in the browser maker’s plan is to counter the cross-site tracking mechanisms that advertisers employ to deliver personalized promotions.

Nguyen laid out the rationale behind the move in his post. “In the physical world, users wouldn’t expect hundreds of vendors to follow them from store to store, spying on the products they look at or purchase,” he wrote. “Users have the same expectations of privacy on the web, and yet in reality, they are tracked wherever they go.”

To prevent cross-site tracking, Mozilla is working on a mechanism that will block cookies and prevent trackers from accessing a device’s local storage. The feature is set to release with Firefox 65 in mid-December.

Further down the line, Mozilla intends to extend the browser’s blocking capabilities to cryptomining scripts and fingerprinting. The latter method is a relatively new form of tracking that allows websites to identify users without any cookies. It instead relies on the fact that certain technical details such as a device’s IP address and wireless network settings can often form a unique combination.

By improving page loading times and privacy, the upcoming features could give Mozilla another way to set Firefox apart from Google LLC’s Chrome. The search giant has also added new web controls to its browser over recent quarters in a bid to create a better online experience for users.

Image: Mozilla