Getting pwned via plain C++-induced memory-unsafety bugs can also lead to privacy trouble, so recommending turning off security updates or recommending forks that aren't staffed well enough to fully track Gecko security patches is not great advice.
Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs
81–90 of 125 posts
Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs
#82What I don't understand is why someone would go to the problems of essentially spending a lot of time breaking their Firefox installation instead of using Tor directly when they care about privacy. Most of the tweaks boil down to turning Firefox defaults into Tor defaults, but without the benefit of actual anonymity, unless you're going to go ahead and install and trust the VPN provider which you also need. The major…
>>Mozilla has been taking gradual steps in that direction I disagree with this.. I do not see Mozilla taking any steps toward privacy at all, infact in many ways they are taking steps AWAY from privacy with many of their recent actions and blunders. From their use of opt-out rather than opt-in for various privacy invading features, their pushing adware to all users via what was suppose to be a QA/Feedback feature, th…
> I do not see Mozilla taking any steps toward privacy at all
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=12609... are some concrete steps being taken.
Or the containers work. Or the tracking protection work. If you're not seeing those, it's because you're not looking.
Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs
#83Also check out Firefox's "privacy.resistFingerprinting" [1] and "privacy.firstparty.isolate" [2] prefs in about:config. These are Tor privacy features that Tor and Mozilla are merging into Firefox. resistFingerprinting reduces the uniqueness of various Firefox properties that are visible to JavaScript and web servers. First-party isolation will isolate third-party cookies by first-party domain. So Facebook Like butto…
Is there any reason not to just block third-party cookies ("Accept third-party cookies: Never" in settings) all-together? I've never encountered anything breaking as a result of doing this.
I've encountered several sites that broken with blocked third-party cookies. Most of the website for one local bank around here and a payment form for a local puppet theater are the ones that come to mind offhand.
Typically, it'll be small sites that are outsourcing part of their site to a third party but don't want to open a separate tab for that which will be affected by this, obviously. If you only browse major sites doing everything in-house you're not going to run into problems.
Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually sad how so many people don't care about their privacy, sure you can give a little but it should be an option not mandatory and in many aspects it is mandatory or done without the person knowledge. The least thing they could do is ask for it... Edit: I shouldn't write early in the morning, tons of grammar mistakes.
I am consistently surprised why this isn't a bigger deal giving the gravity of what is happening. I see news headlining all the time for very transient things but have yet to see an easily accessible version that I could hand my mother of why privacy is so important if anyone could show me one I would greatly appreciate it
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Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs
#85For privacy, on a linux box are there any downsides to simply creating one or more extra accounts, and running Firefox in them for privacy ('DISPLAY=:0 firefox')?. I use this approach to set up firefox as I like it on a spare account, then copy '.mozilla' to '.mozilla-base'. Then it's just a simple case of 'su -l guest' and (via a script) 'rm -fr ~/.mozilla; cp -a ~/.mozilla_base .mozilla; DISPLAY=:0 firefox; rm -fr…
You should look into using firejail. You can do this exact same thing by basically:
firejail --jail /tmp/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox
Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs
#86A much shorter guide that will get you 80% of the value for 2% of the effort: * Install extension "uBlock Origin" * Install extension "Cookie AutoDelete" * Go into Preferences -> Privacy & Security, set "Accept 3rd party cookies" to "Never" Done.
Also, block all tracking servers at the hosts level by adding rules in your /etc/hosts. I've been using https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts for a few years now and it's incredibly useful.
Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs
#87An opinion: The most serious threats to user privacy from advertising companies are the "features" of the browser that allow data to be sent to or from the users computer without any input from the user . In other words, the features that let developers of websites trigger GET and POST, to "push" media to the users computer and allowing "pulling" user data indiscrinately, without explicit consent and sometimes withou…
This is a great post, and is exactly the line I've been thinking along for a long time. I currently use uMatrix for this and it implements this almost perfectly. However, it's scope is too narrow: it only controls requests within the webpage, so doesn't have access to it many requests the browser will make outside of that scope. If you start by broadening the scope from webpage to browser, you eventually get to the o…
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Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs
#88For privacy, on a linux box are there any downsides to simply creating one or more extra accounts, and running Firefox in them for privacy ('DISPLAY=:0 firefox')?. I use this approach to set up firefox as I like it on a spare account, then copy '.mozilla' to '.mozilla-base'. Then it's just a simple case of 'su -l guest' and (via a script) 'rm -fr ~/.mozilla; cp -a ~/.mozilla_base .mozilla; DISPLAY=:0 firefox; rm -fr…
You should look into using firejail. You can do this exact same thing by basically: firejail --jail /tmp/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox You can even enable things like seccomp to further restrict the FF process.
Interesting, thanks; I haven't seen it, looks interesting and a worthy project. I tend to prefer simple low-tech solutions though, and given the first two commands to start it are to do with fixing pulseaudio bugs and desktop integration is (for me personally) somewhat of a put-off.
Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I've tried some of these extremely hardened configurations but ultimately there's too much breakage. My config now is basically: - uBlock Origin in default configuration - No 3rd party cookies (breaks some things, but not too many) - Clear history and cookies on exit Combined with an /etc/hosts file, and rather frequent browser restarts (generally daily).
> Combined with an /etc/hosts file Check out pi-hole and manage that for your whole family
/etc/hosts travels with you. A LAN DNS server does not. It's a good idea to use both.
Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should look into using firejail. You can do this exact same thing by basically: firejail --jail /tmp/firefox /usr/local/bin/firefox You can even enable things like seccomp to further restrict the FF process.
Interesting, thanks; I haven't seen it, looks interesting and a worthy project. I tend to prefer simple low-tech solutions though, and given the first two commands to start it are to do with fixing pulseaudio bugs and desktop integration is (for me personally) somewhat of a put-off.
There's also bubblewrap, which I haven't used, but promises to be an even lighter way to sandbox applications.
Generally, I agree with you that the lighter the implementation is, the better, but when it comes to sandboxing and other security measures, I would prefer not to roll my own.