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Firefox about:config privacy settings

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Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#71

Post by singularity2001 »

kodablah wrote: post #69
phyzome wrote: post #60

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.

Dangerous is assuming Mozilla optimized only for privacy and performance. Why would you assume that and discourage people trying to optimize for that? This list wouldn't exist if Mozilla offered an equivalent, optimizing for only those two metrics, and explaining the tradeoffs you're asking for. What you'll find, as has been the case for Mozilla in some recent decisions, is the tradeoff includes (but is not limited t…

Mozilla is optimizing for a weighted sum of privacy and revenues from Google (who still account for >90% of Mozillas income).

Therefore manually removing all Google partner tracking features in about:config is a very sane choice.

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#72

Post by gsnedders »

Zooper wrote: post #65

Plugin fingerprint protection was removed 3 years ago by a poorly-reasoned patch, favoring the large bug of unimpeded surveillance over the very tiny bug of sites looping through non-existent lists if and only if they need to interact with a plugin. Seeing the conversation, I'm looking for a different browser. "remove_plugins-enumerable_names.patch Bug 757726 hid most plugins from navigator.plugins enumeration to red…

Note with Firefox supporting only one NPAPI plugin now (Flash), as of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1269807, the enumeration case is identical to the probe case.

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#73

Post by samirm »

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…

that's what FF Dev edition is for: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#74

Post by floatingatoll »

Seriously, again?

Applying all of the changes at this list will harm users and increase the chances of threats compromising the browser.

Don’t be shortsighted and use this blindly. Especially do not punish some poor unwary non-tech user by altering these settings on their behalf.

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#75

Post by kbenson »

hnaccy wrote: post #64
phyzome wrote: post #60

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.

Mozilla's incentives may not align with yours, e.g., https://github.com/mozilla-services/screenshots/issues/3503 .

Am I supposed to intuit from that discussion that they have different incentives and/or goals, or that they haven't found time to get it done? Because even though I think it is somewhat poor wording, I think it's the latter.

Also, although I also think the proposed "upload" is poor wording, as many people seeing that will be confused because buttons that say that usually then request what to upload (e.g. "hmm, maybe it's asking for a local image to upload to the cloud for storage?"). You actually are saveing in both cases, in one case to the cloud, inthe other case to the disk. Thus, "Save to cloud" and "Save to disk" (or "Save locally") are much better options in my mind.

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#76

Post by rapnie »

xenophonf wrote: post #14

If you're interested in hardening your Firefox profile, check out this repository of user.js settings: https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js This does things like blocking analytics and browser fingerprinting, and it's a simple to install or revert---just drop the user.js file in your Firefox profile directory.

Wow, this looks quite thorough. Thank you!

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#77

Post by myfonj »

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…

If you type it so often, just make a single character keyword for it, /goddamit/. Or gesture. Or global hotkey. And delete the wrong protocol and/or port entries from history. If you visit that site so often, I bet your URL Bar will suggest / autofill it for you just after typing 'l' or 'lo'.

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#78

Post by andreareina »

DangerousPie wrote: post #70
saiya-jin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah right, because me being forbidden to right click on the site is really in my best interest. I might, you know, inspect DOM and block annoying permanent menus or ads that ublock origin doesn't filter out. And being able to do copy&paste of the content should send me straight to prison.

Well, that is a good example actually. Of course you don't want to lose the ability to right-click, but there are also various web apps that override the right-click menu for legitimate reasons. Two examples that come to mind are Jupyter Lab and Outlook 365, both of which use a custom context menu. Disabling the context menu setting presumably breaks this functionality.

My idiot bank disables right-clicking, and I'd be all over the option to disable right-click hijacking, but yup I also use a web app that overloads right-clicks in a sane and appropriate manner.

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#79

Post by hnaccy »

kbenson wrote: post #75
hnaccy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla's incentives may not align with yours, e.g., https://github.com/mozilla-services/screenshots/issues/3503 .

Am I supposed to intuit from that discussion that they have different incentives and/or goals, or that they haven't found time to get it done? Because even though I think it is somewhat poor wording, I think it's the latter. Also, although I also think the proposed "upload" is poor wording, as many people seeing that will be confused because buttons that say that usually then request what to upload (e.g. "hmm, maybe…

It's been a year and it's a relatively small UI change to at very least make the local save button the primary colored one.

I assume they have some metric for success of the experiment tracking daily uploads to FF screenshots and they're unwilling to sacrifice that.

Re: Firefox about:config privacy settings

#80

Post by colecut »

nathancahill wrote: post #57
SubiculumCode wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Chrome prompts me for my system password before letting me view passwords
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