Mozilla enraged advertisers earlier this year when it said it would block all third-party cookies in its popular Firefox browser. Those same advertisers breathed a collective sigh of relief when Mozilla put those plans on hold to fix a problem in its anti-cookie patch. Now Mozilla is back on the warpath again after finding a potential solution.

Mozilla’s Brendan Eich updated his blog today with news of a new cookie software system out of Stanford called Cookie Clearinghouse. According to its Web site, it will “publish block-lists and and allow-lists based on objective, predictable criteria.” In other words, it creates lists of good cookies and bad cookies that software vendors can then integrate into their own browsers.

Eich feels that Cookie Clearinghouse will help Mozilla better adhere to its proposed default third-party cookie policy:

According to Eich, Mozilla will start to test Cookie Clearinghouse integration soon. In the meantime, the previous anti-cookie patch will remain active in Firefox Aurora.

So, Mozilla might have a solution to its cookie problem where its previous patch was delivering too many false negatives and false positives. It’s still in early testing, but Mozilla will be holding a “brown bag” event on July 2 to provide an update on the future of its third-party cookie policy. Advertisers will no doubt be very interested in what Mozilla has to say as it sounds like Mozilla has found a way to make advertisers relatively happy while respecting the privacy of its users.

[h/t: Washington Post]