The Case for Firefox
I have been on a quest for some time to reduce my exposure to Google products. I switched from Gmail to Protonmail and from Google Search to StartPage. Google is generally on the cutting edge of performance, features, standards, and security in many of their products. The trade-off, however, is handing over incredible amounts of personal data to a company whose business model is using my data for marketing and product development.
A product as fundamental as a desktop web browser is difficult to replace. I have tried reverting from Chrome to Firefox many times over the last few years, but the performance difference was always too noticeable. As of late, however, Firefox is making great strides in performance, and I have recently switched back to it as my daily driver.
Hardening Firefox
User.js
Firefox, by default, is designed with security and privacy as a top priority. Even as such, there are still many ways that the browser can leak personally identifiable data. User.js is a fantastic open-source project which provides a customized profile for tightening up all of the potential weak points left open in a default Firefox installation. This file disables many new HTML APIs that trackers can use to profile the user, locks down Add-ons and plugins, disables various forms of telemetry, hardens cryptography and cipher suites, and much more.
By default, this user.js file breaks some functionality of many popular sites. If that is the case, there is a relaxed branch which provides a bit more of a balance between usability and ultimate privacy. Alternatively, you can determine which settings need to be toned down for your specific needs and adjust them as needed. That is the path I am following by updating my own fork of the project.
Add-ons
To further harden Firefox, I am currently using the following Add-ons:
- CanvasBlocker – To block canvas fingerprinting.
- Decentraleyes – To block tracking by content delivery networks. Learn more.
- Tampermonkey – To run the Anti-Adblock Killer user script.
- HTTPS Everywhere – To prioritize encrypted connections.
- uBlock Origin – In Hard Mode. To block advertisements, tracking scripts, and undesirable/unneeded content.
For a complete solution, I think you’d also need (at a minimum) AdBlock, and Ghostery.
It’d also be nice to block Facebook’s Pixel, but I haven’t found a Firefox extension that will do that (Disconnect for Chrome accomplishes this).
Hi Alex,
Good points. I use uBlock Origin in Hard Mode which I think substitutes AdBlock, Ghostery, and blocks the Facebook Pixel. Adding a note of that configuration to the piece for clarification.
Good to hear from you. I enjoy checking in on your SV adventures from afar from time to time. Cool stuff.
StartPage still uses Google Search. They’re proxied in a way that scrapes away the perzonalized rankings, but like DuckDuckGo: StartPage is just a metasearch engine.
You’ll need to switch to something like Baidu, Bing, findx, Gigablast, or Yandex to actually see different search results that aren’t ordered and prioritized according to the whims of Google.
Right, that is a good point. In my case, I am more concerned with preventing Google from tracking my personal search habits. While they do wield great power if they decide to manipulate the results in a malicious/deceptive way, I still trust using their results at this point (albeit via a proxy) as the leading search provider as long as my own data isn’t being used by them.
Well I think Using privacy badger plugin is also helpful to see what type of script tracking you
you can block ads and tracking scripts with it
and I stooped using Google and i love duckduckgo its search results are great usually found what I need
Privacy Badger is good. I like uBlock Origin better, personally. It is a lot more powerful/customizable.
found your site because of the really good article on blocking remote fonts – i referenced it in my guide, Firefox Configuration Guide for Privacy Freaks and Performance Buffs (https://12bytes.org/7750) – you might want to visit that if should you decide to update this article
you can also find various other articles there, including a table of alternative search engines and fav add-ons