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Mozilla launches an iOS 9 content blocker, Focus by Firefox
Even Mozilla is getting into the iOS 9 ad blocking arena with Focus by Firefox, a free content blocker for Safari on Apple's mobile OS. Just like the early batch of blockers, it can keep your mobile browsing experience free of ads, as well as web analytics and social media trackers. But Mozilla says it'll also be transparent about how it's blocking content. It's using Disconnect's open source block list, which also powers Firefox's Private Browsing on desktop platforms, and it'll inform users as it builds on Focus by Firefox. In addition to making your mobile browsing more private, the blocker can also speed up performance by blocking things like web fonts. Ironically, Focus by Firefox isn't yet compatible with Firefox on iOS, because Apple doesn't allow content blockers to work with third-party browsers.
iOS ad blockers might be messing with your online shopping
Ads pay the bills for a lot of sites (including this one). But they can also be intrusive and with some of the tracking abilities available out there, a bit creepy. To combat some of that and to speed up page loads Apple introduced a Content Blocker feature for mobile Safari that allows third-party developers to create extensions that are "a fast and efficient way to block cookies, images, resources, pop-ups, and other content." Apparently people really hate advertisements on the internet because ad blockers have rocketed to the top of the paid app section of the App Store. But the side effect of at least a few of these apps is that it screws up shopping on the online versions of Sears and Walmart. Fortune talked to the developer of Crystal, an app that's messing with some shopping sites. After they informed him about what was happening, he said he would remove the sites from a blacklist. But, during our test, we were still unable to get to some product pages on Walmart.com to load. So, we decided to test some more online shops to how much commerce is being thwarted by a hatred of ads.
