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Firefox about:config privacy settings

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Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#51

Post by bmurphy1976 »

satysin wrote: post #45
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #18

Earlier 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…

2018 MBP with i9 here as well. I am getting 10-11 hours battery life with Chrome. What exactly are you doing on your machine other than browsing as it isn't the browser causing such low battery life. Even when working in Xcode and IntelliJ I still easily get 7-8 hours.

Compilation, screen brightness, docker, and slack are another significant chunk.

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#54

Post by nathancahill »

daleharvey wrote: post #30
kbenson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must be a different port, otherwise localhost without a port number would work fine. Presumably 8080 or something, which is common for user apps to use since without privileges you can't open a port below 1024 normally.

But what port would firefox connect to, and how would it know? Chrome doesnt do this either as far as I can tell.

> "Chrome autofills the port"

Sounds like they'd visited the URL in the past and had it in their history.

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#55

Post by thiht »

all_factz wrote: post #16

One 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…

>for example, when I type `localhost` in my nav bar, Chrome autofills the port; FF doesn't (it just puts `localhost/`, which is useless).

What? Isn't it the opposite? I have the exact opposite experience with Firefox and Chrome, FF autofills the ports and Chrome doesn't oO

I just checked it right now to be sure I reminded correctly

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#56

Post by T-hawk »

pcwalton wrote: post #27
greggarious wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't like encouraging mucking around in about:config, but I might as well mention this one. One issue fudging around with about:config presents could be increased fingerprintability. More battery life is cool, but will it come at the expense of an easily fingerprinted browser profile?

The opacity of the window OpenGL context is inaccessible to content.

1) He's speaking in general terms. Some settings could quite possibly leak into fingerprinting, even if that particular setting doesn't.

2) Or does it? I could envision a timing attack in Javascript that can detect rendering speed accurately enough to determine if the window is being composited with transparency.

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#57

Post by nathancahill »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #21
colecut wrote: post #15

I noticed recently that unless I manually went in and set a master password, anyone can easily go into the FireFox settings and view all saved passwords.. I've been using FireFox Quantum as my primary browser for 3 or 4 months now and am really trying to love it, but chrome is just so much snappier..

that has been true since forever, btw. I feel like Fireifox should make this more clear to users

Isn't that true for any browser though?

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#58

Post by gsnedders »

kahnpro wrote: post #46
nerdponx wrote: post #24

I frequently see recommendations to disable "safe browsing" features. Why?

Because those features can involve uploading your browsing history to 3rd parties... does Microsoft check locally against malicious site lists, or does it upload every address you visit in order to tell you it's safe?

I'm unaware of any anti-malware/phishing tool that uploads every address, because it'd be far too slow (you want to know if it's malicious before you show the user anything, to avoid them having the chance to interact with it). They all have some local partial list that is used for a first match, and only if that matches do they interact with any online service.

MS don't have a publicly documented API, which makes it harder to know what's being sent (short of reverse-engineering it), but Google's never uploads actual addresses (it almost always only uploads the uppermost 32-bits of the SHA256 hash of the address, and it never uploads the full hash).

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#60

Post by phyzome »

This list is somewhere between worthless and dangerous.

Chesterton's Fence: Presumably Mozilla has already optimized the privacy and performance of Firefox as much as they've felt comfortable doing. If they could change each of those settings as recommended without tradeoffs to help the user, they would have done so.

Without listing the tradeoffs for each one, this list cannot be relied upon.

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