Securing Firefox
My favorite browser is Firefox – I enjoy all of the development add-ons that are available and they make trouble shooting easier. Right out of the box Firefox is fairly secure, but there are steps that you can take to help your privacy online and securing Firefox even more.
Where to start?
The first thing to do is to open up Firefox and type in – about:config into the address bar. It will give you a warning to be careful as you can break things easily. There are several values that we need to change – here is a chart of what we are going to change.
Use the search to find the particular items than toggle them to change the values to the above chart. Another setting to set to FALSE is geo (This lets a site geolocate you).
There are several extensions that you can use for further privacy. uBlock Origin is one of the more popular ones and does a very good job blocking things and additionally contains an anti-tracking engine that blocks web bugs, annoying advertising banners, and social sharing buttons.
Studies
Mozilla introduced what are known as Shield Studies these are experimental aspects to the browser that a user can take advantage of, but might not be aware of their participation in a study. These studies are not transparent. All of the data collected goes to Mozilla. If you do not wish to participate in studies
Type in about:studies in your address bar. There you will see if you are currently enrolled in any studies that you are participating in. To permanently change the settings click on the button marked update options.
Plugins for security
There are also several good plugins that are available to help you browse safer:
- CanvasBlocker – Anti HTML 5 canvas fingerprinting
- HTTPS Everywhere – EFF’s effort to have everyone use HTTPS
- Ghostery – Identifies third party trackers (Doubleclick and Google AdSense among others)
- NoScript – kills JavaScript and other forms of scripting – has granular controls
- TOR Button – Lets you configure TOR easily
- TOR Launcher – Lets you launch TOR
These a just a few of the plugins that I would recommend you checking out. See how you like them and suggest others in the comments. To get Firefox web browser – click here