For a while now I’ve been quite happy running LibreWolf, with Bitwarden and some other privacy extensions. I’ve also switched over from Google to Kagi as a search engine; doesn’t keep me anonymous, but I do love not being the product for once.
Currently rocking a modern Firefox 113 build with the following privacy enhancing addons:
- CanvasBlocker - to increase fingerprint resistance
- Multi-Account Containers - A critical multi-container account plugin
- I don’t care about cookies - Bypass nag screens about cookies.
- LocalCDN - A much more functional alternative to Decentraleyes which actually does benefit privacy
- Temporary Containers - A critical plugin I use to enforce fresh “containers” for certain kinds of browsing. Works with MAC as well; allowing me to isolate critical SNSes and such from just any random old site I visit.
- TrackMeNot - Search Engine Privacy tool; set on a very slow; non-default interval. This injects some “background noise” of activity into search queries and browsing traffic.
- uBlock Origin - Absolutely Essential Adblocker. This addon shoulders a large load of the blocking and filtering work.
- Allow Right-Click - Essential tool to break websites’ habit of interfering with my right to use my browser’s functionality.
Unsupported or "Problematic" Addons
- uMatrix - Additional content filtering addon. Equipped with a lightweight hosts list that only affects well known bad acting sites and trackers. Provides a frontline of defense against novel tracking and fingerprinting domains.
- ^ Listen; say what you want; I don’t care. This addon is something I always pair with uBlock Origin as it provides an additional safety guard against unforeseeable objects, scripts and other nonsense that may appear on a webpage. I can cherrypick what I believe the website needs to function; while denying access to third party scripts and other objects. I still use it to defend my privacy every day.
- WhatCampaign Sorry I couldn’t find a working source link; it seems to be down. - This addon breaks URL tracking breadcrumbs by obfuscating them; which breaks various websites’ attempts at tracking behavior and interferes with websites’ ability to take actions based on URL tracking.
- SponsorBlock for Youtube - Like it or not this little addon saves me a ton of time and helps me avoid feeding an algorithm by alerting me to sponsored videos and skipping unwanted commercials in content I consume. Depending on your ethics; you may or may not want this addon.
- Privacy Pass - Sometimes you just gotta do something about captchas…This tool can help reduce them while respecting your privacy
- Privacy Redirect - [PARTIALLY DISABLED VIA ADDON CONFIGURATION] - Sometimes you just gotta say “Nope!” to a website like Twitter or Google in general and visit a more privacy respecting mirror website. Invidious anyone? (Unfortunately oftentimes these mirror sites are getting sniped and go down frequently for various reasons; making this addon a frequenly frustrating and unreliable one because you have to disable it so often.)
“I don’t care about cookies” was bought by Avast. You should instead check out I still don’t care about cookies
Just my password manager and uBlock Origin :)
As few as possible. Browser extensions can be used to fingerprint you.
I only run uBlock, as it’s included with most privacy-focused browsers like LibreWolf. Even better if the browser has built-in domain blocking like Brave, then you don’t even need that.
Aside from UBlock Origin, I use LibRedirect, which automatically redirects you to privacy-respecting front ends of services like Youtube.
+1 for LibRedirect. It’s a game changer IMO
Firefox with the following.
Absolute must:
- containers
- bitwarden
- ubo
Nice to have:
- privacy badger
- I still don’t care about cookies
- ublacklist
- clearurls
- decentraleyes
A lot of these are unnecessary or actually modify your fingerprint.
- privacy badger
Can be detected https://adtechmadness.wordpress.com/2020/03/27/detecting-privacy-badgers-canvas-fp-detection/
- clearurls
Unnecessary, as uBO has
removeparam- decentraleyes
Modifies your fingerprint making you more unique.
For more information about what not to use see https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions#-dont-bother
Modifies your fingerprint making you more unique.
I disagree, the whole usecase for decentraleyes (although i’d recommend localcdn instead as it supports a lot more frameworks), if for users not using a vpn, in which case you’d be fingerprintable via your ip address anyways, what localcdn achieves is having privacy from third parties, as opposed to the website itself.
If you’re using localcdn with a vpn, i agree that’d be counter productive since what does it matter that third parties get your ip if that ip’s shared with a massive group of people and isn’t your real one, but otherwise its still a perfectly valid addon.
I disagree, the whole usecase for decentraleyes (although i’d recommend localcdn instead as it supports a lot more frameworks), if for users not using a vpn, in which case you’d be fingerprintable via your ip address anyways, what localcdn achieves is having privacy from third parties, as opposed to the website itself.
That is not how it works. It modifies your fingerprint because its no longer requesting certain resources. Even one of the Tor developers points that out and it’s why it’s mentioned on https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions#-dont-bother
Can you explain removeparam?
It’s described in the documentation for uBO https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax#removeparam
Currently, I’m using Brave Browser :
- Clear URLs
- Dark Reader : for sites that don’t have a dark mode
- Decentraleyes
- Grammarly: I’m not a native English speaker. I like to write English with good grammar
- HTTPS Everywhere
- Imagus: for zooming pictures by just hovering
- JSON Formatter
- Local CDN
- MultiLogin : a container like in the Firefox browser
- Privacy Badger
- Link Grabber : grabbed all the links on the page
- Disable automatic tab discarding : I don’t like when the tab automatically refreshes when I didn’t open it for a while. This extension disables that
- Old Reddit Redirect
- Reddit Enhancement Suite
- Return YouTube Dislike
- Snowflake
- SponsorBlock for Youtube
For search engines, I’m still using Google. Because I think the results it’s more and better (I guess). If not Google, I will use DuckDuckGo or Brave Search
Keep in mind LocalCDN will make your fingerprint more unique. HTTPS Everywhere is unmaintained and no longer needed… and you certainly don’t need Decentraleyes, thats a duplicate of LocalCDN and is also unmaintained.
