Mozilla's Firefox Version 22 includes an automatic third-party cookie-blocking, a move that has already been opposed by the online ad industry. Firefox 22, slated to ship as Release on June 25, was moved on Friday to the Aurora channel. Aurora is the name for Firefox's least-polished preliminary version that is aimed at general users. The new cookie blocking is listed in the summary of new features for the upcoming browser.

According to the new policy, users of the upcoming build of Firefox must directly interact with a site or company for a cookie to be installed on their machine.

Third party cookies are typically used by web advertising companies to track users, and deliver them targeted ads. The new Firefox policy will allow cookies presented from domains that users actually visit -- a "first-party" site -- but will automatically block those generated by a third-party domain unless the user had previously visited the cookie's site-of-origin.

Last month. both the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Association of National Advertisers (ANA) slammed the new setting, claiming it would force thousands of small online businesses to close.

"The new default is currently only in this very early developer build of Firefox as it goes through Mozilla?s usual vetting process. As with other features we deploy, it will be several months of evaluating technical input from our users and the community before the new policy enters our Beta and General release versions of Firefox," said Alex Fpowel, who leads privacy and public policy for Mozilla.