I frequently see recommendations to disable "safe browsing" features. Why?
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Firefox about:config privacy settings
31–40 of 154 posts
Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings
#32> These settings are best combined with your standard privacy extensions (HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript/Request Policy, uBlock origin, agent spoofing, Privacy Badger etc)
Side question: how many of these ought to just be standard behavior of the browser? For example, will Firefox's new tracking protection make Privacy Badger obsolete? Should the HTTPS Everywhere extension, which attempts to route any HTTP request to an equivalent HTTPS, be the default behavior?
Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings
#33First Party Isolation is the best flag you can set.
Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings
#34I wish there was a setting to prevent changes to scroll behavior.
Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings
#35I frequently see recommendations to disable "safe browsing" features. Why?
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Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings
#36I frequently see recommendations to disable "safe browsing" features. Why?
Hysteria or ignorance, as with other items in this list. Safe browsing is designed not to compromise privacy.
Notably, the Safe Browsing Update API never sends the URL itself to the server: it does a local lookup with hash prefixes of the URL, and only if that finds some threat does it then send the hash prefix to Google (which gives some degree of deniability, given they never know what actual URL you've visited, and only rarely get anything).
Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings
#37One thing that's frustrated me about FF (and kept me using Chrome) is that local development is a pain in general... for example, when I type `localhost` in my nav bar, Chrome autofills the port; FF doesn't (it just puts `localhost/`, which is useless). Next, FF interacts oddly with NGINX, telling me `The plain HTTP request was sent to HTTPS port`, whereas Chrome just passes me right along, giving me a little `Not Se…
Create a bookmark with a easily type-able name. The bar will autocomplete your bookmarks.
Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings
#38Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings
#39> These settings are best combined with your standard privacy extensions (HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript/Request Policy, uBlock origin, agent spoofing, Privacy Badger etc) Side question: how many of these ought to just be standard behavior of the browser? For example, will Firefox's new tracking protection make Privacy Badger obsolete? Should the HTTPS Everywhere extension, which attempts to route any HTTP request to an…
I'm sure plenty of people on here would object to HTTPS Everywhere being default: "but the user typed the HTTP scheme, the browser should do what the user asked!".
That said, the bigger problem is that too many things that HTTPS Everywhere tries to upgrade to HTTPS are only partial versions of the site; you'd probably need something more conservative to avoid too much breakage.
Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a new 2018 MBP with an i9. I've noticed I can squeeze upwards of six hours battery out of it using Safari. With Firefox I'm lucky to get three. I made this change just to see. So far it does appear to have lowered the energy impact score a bit, but I'm not sure it's enough to matter yet. I guess we'll know in a couple hours. Edit: 20 minutes in and I've watched my Time Remaining estimate creep up from 3 hours…
I use Firefox. I've found the big battery hit has come from streaming services (Netflix, Pandora, Spotify, Youtube, etc). One small change I made was streaming music to my phone, and that had a big impact. I know that streaming will use some battery life, but the amount of CPU being used by say, Pandora, was rather extreme.
Sure, those will kill battery usage, but that's not what I'm doing. Typically I'm bouncing between the browser with about 10 informational tabs open, terminal, and sublime text all day long. There's a night and day difference using Safari vs Firefox for just regular browsing.
I'm not the only one who experiences this either, I have a coworker who complains about the same issue with his couple year old MBP. Firefox is a battery vampire.