Mozilla has now updated its Firefox web browser with improved privacy and security capabilities, making private surfing even more private.

The company calls the new feature Private Browsing with Tracking Protection. Unlike other browsers, the new Firefox 42 blocks parts of web pages that could track browsing activity, on top of not recording browsing history, as per the official Mozilla blog site.

As of the moment, no other big-name browser is offering a similar capability. Take for instance Google Chrome's popular Incognito Mode. The feature does a fine job of clearing browser history, search history and cookies after pages have been closed. However, it does not block web page trackers that could potentially collect information from users when they visited a particular site.

"We care a lot about choice and control, so we're really proud of Firefox 42," Mozilla Firefox product executive Nick Nguyen told eWeek. "Tracking Protection is a content blocker that blocks tracking elements from Web pages."

It should be noted that prior Firefox builds already had a Do Not Track (DNT) feature. DNT debuted on Firefox 4.0 back in 2011. The feature allowed users to decide if they wanted to be tracked. One issue with DNT though is that it required web pages to respect the user's DNT preference, which doesn't usually happen.

Despite its inefficiencies, DNT was Mozilla's foundation for developing an improved anti-tracking feature. Nguyen also said the company isn't against online advertising but it does want its users to have choice and control over ads.

"With Tracking Protection, we hope the advertising industry will engage with us in a dialogue about what is tracking and what gets blocked," clarified Nguyen.

As a disclaimer, Firefox 42's Tracking Protection does limit tracking but it does not guarantee 100 percent user anonymity. Even when using Private Browsing mode with Tracking Protection turned on, the user's IP address is still visible and can still be tracked by websites. But Nguyen assured the possibility is very small in Firefox 42.

"If there is third-party content on a page that is doing tracking, they won't get the HTTP headers or a user's IP address because Tracking Protection won't load that content. If the content isn't loaded, the server is not aware of the client."

Firefox 42 with Private Browsing plus Tracking Protection is available on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android.

You can get the latest version of Firefox for Android through this Google Play link. Meanwhile, Mozilla is currently planning to release a Firefox app for iOS later this year or early 2016.