Facebook Container by Mozilla Firefox

What does it do?
Facebook Container works by isolating your Facebook identity into a separate container that makes it harder for Facebook to track your visits to other websites with third-party cookies.

How does it work?
When you first install this extension, it will close your Facebook tabs, delete your Facebook cookies and log you out of Facebook.
The next time you navigate to Facebook, the site will load in a new tab. The tab is coloured blue to indicate you are in the container.
You can log in and use Facebook as you normally do when in the Facebook Container. If you click on a non-Facebook link or navigate to a non-Facebook website in the URL bar, these pages will load outside of the container.
Clicking Facebook Share buttons on other browser tabs will load them within the Facebook Container. You should know that using these buttons passes information to Facebook about the website that you shared from.

Which features will not function on other websites?
Because you will be logged into Facebook only in the container, embedded Facebook comments and Like buttons in tabs outside the container will not work. This prevents Facebook from associating information about your activity on websites outside of Facebook with your Facebook identity.

In addition, websites that allow you to create an account or log in using your Facebook credentials will generally not work properly. Because this extension is designed to separate Facebook use from use of other websites, this behavior is expected.

What does Facebook Container NOT protect against?
It is important to know that this extension doesn’t prevent Facebook from mishandling the data that it already has, or permitted others to obtain, about you. Facebook will still have access to everything that you do while you are on facebook.com, including your Facebook comments, photo uploads, likes, any data you share with Facebook connected apps, etc.

Rather than stop using a service you find valuable, we think you should have tools to limit what data others can obtain. This extension focuses on limiting Facebook tracking, but other ad networks may try to correlate your Facebook activities with your regular browsing. In addition to this extension, you can change your Facebook settings, use Private Browsing, block trackers and block third-party cookies, and use the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension to further limit tracking.

What data does Mozilla receive from this extension?
Mozilla does not collect data from your use of the Facebook Container extension. We do receive the number of times the extension is installed or removed. Learn more

Other Containers
Facebook Container leverages the Containers feature that is already built into Firefox. When you enable Facebook Container, you may also see Containers named Personal, Work, Shopping and Banking whilst you browse. If you wish to use multiple Containers, you’ll have the best user experience if you install the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension. Learn more on our support site.

Known issues
When Facebook is open and you navigate to another website using the same tab (by entering an address, doing a search or clicking a bookmark), the new website will be loaded outside of the Container and you will not be able to navigate back to Facebook using the back button in the browser.

NOTE: If you are a Multi-Account Containers user who has already assigned Facebook to a Container, this extension will not work. In an effort to preserve your existing Container set-up and logins, this add-on will not include the additional protection to keep other sites out of your Facebook Container. If you would like this additional protection, first unassign facebook.com in the Multi-Account Container extension, and then install this extension.

What version of Firefox do I need for this?
This extension works with Firefox 57 and higher on desktop. Note that it does not work on other browsers and it does not work on Firefox for mobile.

If you believe you are using Firefox 57+, but the install page is telling you that you are not on a supported browser, you can try installing by selecting or copying and pasting this link: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/latest/facebook-container/platform:2/addon-954390-latest.xpi. (This may be occurring because you have set a preference or installed an extension that causes your browser to obscure its user agent for privacy or other reasons.)

How does this compare to the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension?
Facebook Container specifically isolates Facebook and works automatically. Firefox Multi-Account Containers is a more general extension that allows you to create containers and determine which sites open in each container.

You can use Multi-Account Containers to create a container for Facebook and assign facebook.com to it. Multi-Account Containers will then make sure to only open facebook.com in the Facebook Container. However, unlike Facebook Container, Multi-Account Containers doesn’t prevent you from opening non-Facebook sites in your Facebook Container. So users of Multi-Account Containers need to take a bit of extra care to ensure they leave the Facebook Container when navigating to other sites. In addition, Facebook Container assigns some Facebook-owned sites like Instagram and Messenger to the Facebook Container. With Multi-Account Containers, you will have to assign these in addition to facebook.com.

Facebook Container also deletes Facebook cookies from your other containers on install and when you restart the browser, to clean up any potential Facebook trackers. Multi-Account Containers does not do that for you.

Report Issues
If you come across any issues with this extension, please let us know by filing an issue. Thank you!