Multi account containers are super useful for managing multiple accounts though. Keeping work/personal/hobby stuff separate is awesome.
Privacy
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
I find the temporary containers extension essential. Set automatic mode and forget.
How exactly are my URLs going to be cleaned without ClearURLs?
My extensions are:
- UBlock Origin
- Dark Reader
- ClearURLs
- NoScript
- Multi-Account Containers
- Cookie Quick Manager (probably not required since I don't deal much with cookies other than flushing them)
- LocalCDN
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/master/LegitimateURLShortener.txt add this to ublock origin
The option in uBlock Origin should really be baked-in and more prominent IMO, also I think I had some issues with the shortener not working on, e.g. Amazon in the past, but things might be working fine now, idk
Funny how even when I toggle the "advanced user" option on, I still can't see any interactive menu/console to work with individual scripts. This is what prompted me to install NoScript in the first place. Am I using an old version?
Sorry, don't know about that, I was talking about the ClearURLs replacement
According to the wiki through ublock but I honestly don’t know how to do that
NoScript and Cookies Auto Delete are very much needed. uBlock's JavaScript control is extremely basic and doesn't toggle WebGL.
As for cookies, I only set them for sites I have accounts or ones that need to remember user data in Chromium. I personally don't use CAD but I can certainly appreciate its convenience.
Any references you can give? I would like to research this a bit more.
Yes but...
- Most people want a quick-fix.... "just install these extensions and all your web privacy issues will be handled automatically, in the background and you don't ever have to do anything at all." The "no user effort required" approach isn't realistic and arkenfox is not a quick-fix. It's a lot of tough love imo.
- To use arkenfox and also not get frustrated that the entire internet is broken you will need to create a good user-overrides.js file. Creating a good one takes time. So take it and create a good one.
- RFP breaks a lot of things. If you choose to disable RFP, the arkenfox wiki suggests you use the anti-fingerprinting extension, CanvasBlocker.
- If you use arkenfox's user.js you'll probably want to create multiple profiles with different levels of arkenfox strength, which can be determined by your user-overrides.js file.
I mostly use arkenfox... but I also have a TCP + uBO only profile for when I need it.
The link says that NoScript is "redundant with uBlock Origin"
I like NoScript because I can click on its icon on the toolbar, and easily select which scripts on a given page to whitelist, or which to whitelist temporarily (until browser quit.) And on any page, I can select which set of scripts (by domain name) on that page to run or whitelist.
With uBlock Origin, it's only "all script on the page" or "no scripts on the page", right?
With uBlock Origin, it’s only “all script on the page” or “no scripts on the page”, right?
nope. You should read the uBO wiki's pages about medium mode and hard mode. You have pretty granular control if you're using uBO in "I am an advanced user" mode.
Oh, thanks, I didn't realize that about advanced user mode, I'll look into it!
Take a look at this documentation, it’s pretty good.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-quick-guide
Ublock Origin allows that as well, but it's not as easy as NoScript. So, IMO that's a perfectly valid reason to prefer NoScript.
I've never heard of Arkenfox or user.js. what do they do?
Also wondering how much more effective Arkenfox is to tightened security settings, uBlock, Decentraleyes, Ghostery, etc. on Firefox?
Isn't Privacy Badger better than Ghostery?
Yes, ghostery was purchased by a spammer or something like that IIRC
Ah, damn. I didn't know that. Coincidentally, I also already have Privacy Badger.
Thanks, by the way!
Ghost constantly tries to phone home I've noticed. Maybe for good reason but it freaked me out.
I personally prefer NoScript not for just the privacy stuff, but for the security of knowing that an accidental click to a malicious site using some zeroday JavaScript exploit won't kick in like it would, had it not been default blocked.
My NoScript profile is also fairly populated with things I've trusted over the years, so it's really only new websites that require JavaScript that I have to worry about.
Maybe just me being over cautious, but just keeps me at ease, personally.
NoScript is fantastic.
As a web developer, I have to build tools for the SEO/ad team to turn my beautiful optimized sites to be ad-filled garbage. And frequently, that involves fetching data from third party sites that even I feel disgusted by, that can be easily blocked with NoScript.
This is likely a very unpopular opinion, but I'm not a fan of the "only use uBlock origin" view that seems to be going around, yes using just that makes you less fingerprintable, but you're also just giving yourself a single point of failure and giving full control of your privacy to whatever the uBlock Origin devs want to add or refuse to add, who are at the end of the day still only human and can make mistakes.
Agreed. Ideally, any such single point of failure needs to be under a distributed or accountable kind of control. Perhaps EFF could take over uBO, for example.
Okay, which settings specifically replace these extensions? They usually also have a nice GUI with validation which is a better UX than editing text files and checking if it works by yourself.
To add to the other fine points here, I almost exclusively do all my personal browsing on my phone. Arkenfox isn't designed to work on Firefox mobile.
Like the other poster said, Mull is a fork of Firefox for Android that includes tweaks from the Arkenfox user.js.
My personal view is that anyone who forks a browser is probably not experienced enough to know how much work it is to patch security holes in a timely manner in such a large code base.
Good thing arkenfox is not a FF fork and you still get the same updates from Firefox main.
Is it possible to limit permissions for an extension to just a few domains? Most of them I'm using just for specific sites
Just use LibreWolf. It has everything already set up and it includes uBlock Origin by default.
I used to use Librewolf but found it lagged behind Firefox too much when it came to security updates. But I agree with you that it does take the work out of configuring Firefox, which is convenient.
Love when you install a boring extension on vscode and it has a telemetry setting…