Firefox 127 With 32-bit x86 Linux Pretending To Be "x86_64" To Reduce Fingerprinting

Mozilla Firefox 127.0 binaries are available for download today ahead of tomorrow's official announcement. Firefox 127 brings a few nice changes for this month's feature update.

Given the diminishing number of Linux x86 32-bit installations, Mozilla is now reporting 32-bit x86 Linux builds via the HTTP user string as... x86_64. Firefox 32-bit x86 builds continue to be made and supported but for reducing fingerprinting risks with x86 32-bit use on the decline, Firefox is now reporting them as "x86_64" to websites. This x86 32-bit reporting as x86_64 is for the HTTP user agent string as well as the navigator.platform and navigator.oscpu Web APIs.

Firefox 127.0 also now honors the rel="dns-prefetch" link hint for DNS pre-fetching for HTTPS documents to help with optimized load times, the option to close all duplicate tabs in a window, and the Firefox "Screenshots" feature has seen a big update. Firefox's screenshot tool can now take screenshots of SVG and XML files as well as various other types. There is also keyboard shortcuts, theme compatibility, and high contrast mode support. Capturing large screenshots is also now faster.

Ahead of tomorrow's official release announcement, the Firefox 127.0 binaries can be downloaded now from ftp.mozilla.org. Additional developer related changes for Firefox 127 are noted on developer.mozilla.org.