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Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs

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Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs

#101

Post by youseecomrade »

cpeterso wrote: post #29

Also 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…

// NOTICE: Breaks Firefox addon "Cookie AutoDelete" as of February 2018

https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js/commit/d6ac49a531b58c8f...

Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs

#102

Post by elorant »

severine wrote: post #100
elorant wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, that doesn't work. I have it at one (default) and it's still spawning too many processes. I guess it's part of how things work now with FF. You get a snappier experience in exchange of higher memory usage because it's multitasking. If only we could turn that thing off.

My bad, sorry... What about this, from [1,2]? > To disable e10s/multiprocess go to about:config by typing it in your URL bar. Search for browser.tabs.remote.autostart using the search box on about:config. There may be multiple results. Set them all to false and restart the browser (if there are no entries, create it as a boolean and set it to false). [1] https://support.mozilla.org/es/questions/1191898 [2] https://su…

Yeap, that did the trick. Thanks a million dude.

Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs

#103

Post by Sylos »

eps wrote: post #46
CJefferson wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand you not wanting Mozilla to be able to push urgent patches, this is (in my) opinion necessary in sufficently serious cases. Imagine a remote code execution hole in Firefox, being actively attacked through ad networks. In that situation, every minute counts, and an attack could perform serious damage.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." It's not about denying Mozilla an option of pushing zero-day patches. It's about the fact that it's a built-in always-on _concealed_ feature.

The source code is public, there's probably been a blog post about it, there's an about-page for it, and there actually is a setting for it in the main-UI.

I really don't see how it's particularly concealed. If they actually tried to conceal it, you would not know about it at all.

Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs

#104

Post by Sylos »

elorant wrote: post #96
severine wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is configurable! Preferences > General > Performance > Uncheck the box next to Use recommended performance settings. You will then be able to change the following settings: - Use hardware acceleration when available - Content process limit

Nope, that doesn't work. I have it at one (default) and it's still spawning too many processes. I guess it's part of how things work now with FF. You get a snappier experience in exchange of higher memory usage because it's multitasking. If only we could turn that thing off.

The setting that Severine mentioned controls the number of content processes, which is the number of processes that Firefox uses for its tabs.

It will still have another process that controls all the UI and all those browser tab processes, a process for sandboxing extensions/plugins and then even more processes for miscellaneous things, for example I think asynchronous scrolling has another process and when doing performance improvements, they often just stuck long operations into a separate process.

Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs

#105

Post by dorfsmay »

hazeii wrote: post #99
dorfsmay wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, if you try https://www.nothingprivate.ml/ from two different instances of Firefox using your script, is it still able to tack you? FWIW, I use different Firefox "profile" and that site is able to link the two profiles.

In both cases (on separate accounts, same computer), it said "Thank you, xx xxxx! Let's see the magic..." (I used the same user name and IP address from both). Restarting (exactly the same version) of Firefox a second time and revisiting the site gave: "Are you anonymous? Do you think that switching to your browser's private browsing mode or incognito mode will make you anonymous? Sorry to disappoint you, but you are…

Thanks. So running it in different Unix account gives at least one more level of isolation, compared to Firefox profiles.

Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs

#106

Post by kaskavalci »

robinhood wrote: post #86
paol wrote: post #59

A 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.

How do you automate its updates?

Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs

#107

Post by gorhill »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #24

> NoScript Security Suite: since uMatrix will be used to block scripts, this functionality is not required from NoScript This is a mistake. uMatrix will block requests which would pull source code, but it does not stop script execution, i.e. those embedded in the page itself. NoScript stops script execution completely. NoScript also activates ` ` tags which will allow content to render on Medium. And which break Twit…

> uMatrix will block requests which would pull source code, but it does not stop script execution, i.e. those embedded in the page itself

You are mistaken. You could have taken a few seconds to try for yourself before making this erroneous claim.

> NoScript also activates `` tags which will allow content to render on Medium.

uMatrix can also "activate" the `noscript` tags, and this can be disabled/enabled on a per-site basis.

Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs

#108

Post by Spivak »

suprfnk wrote: post #32
ams6110 wrote: post #4

Earlier 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).

> Clear history [..] on exit Why the history? That's not readable by anyone except you, right? > Clear [..] cookies on exit So do you have to keep logging in to websites daily? Isn't that very annoying?

I'm a person who clears cookies on exit. With a password manager with autofill it's not much of a burden but it does ensure that people can't resurrect old sessions and can't access my accounts without my password DB unlocked.

Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs

#109

Post by tinus_hn »

hazeii wrote: post #67
Santosh83 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK Firefox profiles should give you the same kind of privacy as running them under different user accounts.

Indeed, that's the approach I use to run multiple copies of Thunderbird. Using a separate account does add protection against browser exploits though (if visiting an interesting-but-risky site, the 'guest' account approach prevents access to the main account - at least as long as a browser exploit doesn't then lead to a privilege escalation).

Although exploitation is more difficult, all programs that run in an X session have complete access to all the other programs in it, regardless of user ids or for that matter the host the program is running on.

Re: Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs

#110

Post by tinus_hn »

QasimK wrote: post #39
cpeterso wrote: post #29

Also 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.

If you ever visit the Facebook website directly the cookie is set because then it’s a first party cookie. Then it keeps sending this cookie on other sites.
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