#browser privacy extensions

[olivergisttv]

The Best Tools for Automating Your Online Privacy Settings

In today’s digital age, protecting your online privacy is more critical than ever. With data breaches, surveillance, and tracking becoming increasingly common, having control over your personal information is essential. Thankfully, there are several tools available to help automate your privacy settings, ensuring that your data remains secure without having to manually manage it all the time.…

[tyote]

lmao @ mozilla putting telemetry in firefox, then saying they will "anonymize it" and "not sell it to third parties"... and then a month later they acquire an advertising broker and send your data to that, which technically means it's a first party and their little "promise" isn't broken, while still attempting to send you directed ads based on your browsing data & profit from it

[netscapenavigator-official]

Watching a ““privacy education”” post come onto my dash where the poster recommends installing a shitton of extensions, like:

Usually not only are the extensions awful, but the real privacy advice would be to use as few extensions as possible.

Every extension you add to your browser makes your online fingerprint more unique, and therefore, more traceable. If you really care about your online privacy, you need to minimize your extensions down to the bare necessities and learn to use your browsers built-in settings to their full potential. uBlock Origin can handle A LOT of the stuff that extensions like Privacy Badger, Decentraleyes, and ClearURLs can. Firefox also has native settings that make extensions like HTTPS Everywhere and Cookie Autodelete entirely redundant.

Also for the love of god DO NOT install more than one ad blocker. By doing so, you dramatically increase the chances that your browser will take an anti-ad blocker bait ad, resulting in the anti-ad blocker pop-ups. uBlock Origin is all you need. It’s the best of the best, and it respects your privacy unlike some blockers like Ghostery which are known to sell your data.

Also, on the topic of password managers, Bitwarden should be your only choice. Yes, even over Proton Pass. Any software that has a marketing budget that big should not be trusted. They will flip on a dime and paywall features without warning. We’ve seen it time and time again. Use Bitwarden. Period.

[keylimegreendog20]

I finally switched to @firefox-official as my default browser!! Just installed lots of great extensions (most of which I found from this post) and I’m so excited about it!

I’ve put this off for months because it felt like a difficult task, but Google’s stupid AI answers from every search has been the final straw for me and now that I finally spent the six minutes it took to switch to Firefox and then another few minutes to install some good extensions I can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner.

For everyone else who has been putting this off like I did, this is your sign to go forth and make the switch!!

[thoughtportal]

he Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension lets you carve out a separate box for each of your online lives – no more opening a different browser just to check your work email!

Under the hood, it separates website storage into tab-specific Containers. Cookies downloaded by one Container are not available to other Containers. You can even integrate individual Containers with Mozilla VPN to protect your browsing and location. With the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension, you can...

Sign in to two different accounts on the same site (for example, you could sign in to work email and home email in two different Container tabs.

Keep different kinds of browsing far away from each other (for example, you might use one Container tab for managing your Checking Account and a different Container tab for searching for new songs by your favorite band)

Avoid leaving social-network footprints all over the web (for example, you could use a Container tab for signing in to a social network, and use a different tab for visiting online news sites, keeping your social identity separate from tracking scripts on news sites)

Protect your browsing activity in individual Containers using Mozilla VPN, so you can shop while travelling abroad but check your bank account from a server in your home country.

After installing the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension, click the Containers icon to edit your Containers. Change their colors, names, and icons. Long-click the new tab button to open a new Container tab.

[imams-diary]

Chrome browser has several popular extensions that can save time and help you accomplish tasks more quickly. Here are 5 Google Chrome Extensions that will simplify your life.

➡️ Explor Here

[janokenmun]

you can import your data & stuff from chrome too!

and there's lots of cool themes you can get, if you wanna check those out before (or after) you switch:

i've been using firefox for a couple years, and it's worked great!! the only issues i've had were ironically with it being TOO secure; some of my school's stuff relies on trackers for linking accounts and whatnot so i had to disable firefox's tracking protection (and the additional anti-tracker extension i installed) to get it to work properly

The most popular browsers in different countries in 2012 and 2022.

by @theworldmaps_

[alebrijediscordico]

...with firefox bs on the horizon, honestly i might start looking into the tor browser again

[mikestek]

Is it time to re-consider your browser? Top Alternatives to Google Chrome with Pros and Cons

Alternatives to Google Chrome are becoming increasingly popular as users seek improved privacy and performance. If you’re feeling the pinch of data collection or find Chrome slowing down your browsing experience, it may be time to explore your options. This guide will probe into the pros and cons of various web browsers that could better suit your needs while ensuring a more secure and efficient…

[ms-demeanor]

Do you have thoughts about the changes to Firefox's Terms of Use and Privacy Notice? A lot of people seem to be freaking out ("This is like when google removed 'Don't be evil!'"), but it seems to me like just another case of people getting confused by legalese.

Yeah you got it in one.

I've been trying not to get too fighty about it so thank you for giving me the excuse to talk about it neutrally and not while arguing with someone.

Firefox sits in such an awful place when it comes to how people who understand technology at varying levels interact with it.

On one very extreme end you've got people who are pissed that Firefox won't let you install known malicious extensions because that's too controlling of the user experience; these are also the people who tend to say that firefox might as well be spyware because they are paid by google to have google as the default search engine for the browser.

In the middle you've got a bunch of people who know a little bit about technology - enough to know that they should be suspicious of it - but who are only passingly familiar with stuff like "internet protocols" and "security certificates" and "legal liability" who see every change that isn't explicitly about data anonymization as a threat that needs to be killed with fire. These are the people who tend not to know that you can change the data collection settings in Firefox.

And on the other extreme you've got people who are pretty sure that firefox is a witch and that you're going to get a virus if you download a browser that isn't chrome so they won't touch Firefox with a ten foot pole.

And it's just kind of exhausting. It reminds me of when you've got people who get more mad at queer creators for inelegantly supporting a cause than they are at blatant homophobes. Like, yeah, you focus on the people whose minds you can change, and Firefox is certainly more responsive to user feedback than Chrome, but also getting you to legally agree that you won't sue Firefox for temporarily storing a photo you're uploading isn't a sign that Firefox sold out and is collecting all your data to feed to whichever LLM is currently supposed to be pouring the most bottles of water into landfills before pissing in the plastic bottle and putting the plastic bottle full of urine in the landfill.

The post I keep seeing (and it's not one post, i've seen this in youtube comment sections and on discord and on tumblr) is:

Well-meaning person who has gotten the wrong end of the stick: This is it, go switch to sanguinetapir now, firefox has gone to the dark side and is selling your data. [Link to *an internet comment section* and/or redditor reactions as evidence of wrongdoing].

Response: I think you may be misreading the statements here, there's been an update about this and everything.

Well-meaning (and deeply annoying) person who has gotten the wrong end of the stick: If you'd read the link you'd see that actually no I didn't misinterpret this, as evidenced by the dozens of commenters on this other site who are misinterpreting the ToU the same way that I am, but more snarkily.

Bud.

Anyway the consensus from the actual security nerds is "jesus fucking christ we carry GPS locators in our pockets all goddamned day and there are cameras everywhere and there is a long-lasting global push to erode the right to encrypt your data and facebook is creating tracking accounts for people who don't even have a facebook and they are giving data about abortion travel to the goddamned police state" and they could not be reached for comment about whether Firefox is bad now, actually, because they collect anonymized data about the people who use pocket.

My response is that there is a simple fix for all of this and it is to walk into the sea.

(I am not worried about the updated firefox ToU, I personally have a fair amount of data collection enabled on my browser because I do actually want crash reports to go to firefox when my browser crashes; however i'm not actually all that worried about firefox collecting, like, ad data on me because I haven't seen an ad in ten years and if one popped up on my browser i'd smash my screen with a stand mixer - I don't care about location data either because turning on location on your devices is for suckers but also *the way the internet works means unless you're using a traffic anonymizer at all times your browser/isp/websites you connect to/vpn/what fucking ever know where you are because of the IP address that they *have* to be able to see to deliver the internet to you and that is, generally speaking, logged as a matter of course by the systems that interact with it*)

Anyway if you're worried about firefox collecting your data you should ABSOLUTELY NOT BE ON DISCORD OR YOUTUBE and if you are on either of those things you should 100% be using them in a browser instead of an app and i don't particularly care if that browser is firefox or tonsilferret but it should be one with an extension that allows you to choose what data gets shared with the sites it interacts with.

[lamtfluff]

A few years ago I had a phase of being REALLY into digital privacy, using tor, duckduckgo, etc before suffering some burnout because I was trying to be 100% secure. So I'm by no means a expert I'm just relaying experience.

The culture of a lot of left leaning and "fandommy" sites (tumblr, twitter, etc) tends to fear/dislike (or just not know about) a lot of the IT stuff used by people into online privacy because they asscoiate it with "techbros". ESPECIALLY anything even remotely involving cryptocurrency. But if Trump is going to start censoring things and making morning after pills harder to get now might be a VERY good time for Americans to get into online privacy and how to avoid being tracked as well as avoiding censorship. Perhaps even some crypto to buy things discretly (or perhaps if ICE agents start caring about cash?) and because many activists groups also take donations in crypto. Never dealt with crypto myself but from what I know Monero was designed to be more untracable than Bitcoin. Don't know how succesfull that is though. Definetly get into privacy in general though.

I'll leave some useful links to get started. Words of advice:

Don't install a fuckton of privacy extensions on your browser, your unique combination of extensions will give your browser a unique fingerprint. Instead read up on and pick a few commonly used ones.

The BIGGEST annoyance for me was acedemic/proffesional settings because noone wants to switch over to some software they never heard off for one group project. Personally I use some normie software for exclusivly proffesional purposes with NO other information on me and do my actual browsing/leisure computer use more privatly.

https://www.privacytools.io/os: General software/browser/etc recomendations.

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/: Test how private your browser is.

https://www.torproject.org/: THE gold standard for privacy focused browsers. Also obscures ip. Might not always be practical. Has the disadvantage of being notoriously slow and is blocked by some services/websites to avoid people bypassing ip bans and whatnot. Probably don't use this as your everyday browser but if you ever need to look up anything without censorship use tor.

https://tails.net/: Install a portable mini operating system on a usb stick to browse privately from any computer.

https://www.eff.org/ Electronic frontier foundations website.

https://mastodon.social/explore Don't have experience with it myself. But open source social media that should be much harder to censor.

Tumblr probably won't like me talking too directly about this because of ties to piracy but for people interested in banned books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_library should be an interesting read...

[ale-ringo]

What's Fingerprint and how it's used to identify you

Concerns about how a website can identify you on more Websites. Well, I've got a solution to that!

When you browse the internet websites collects some data of your computer or mobile phone( your time zone, your screen size, canvas fingerprint, webgl…) and they use it to assign you a fingerprint. In this way they know who you are in more websites. You may be wondering:”How do I stop it?”. You’re here to find it out. I’ll do a version for Gecko browsers because they’re known for their security…

[professional-007]

https://www.tkqlhce.com/click-100961462-15402312

[kaceykoopa]

Peace of mind

What's it worth, to you? For me, it's the freedom to choose what I'd like to see online. Tired of unskippable ads ranging anywhere between 3 30 second ads, to a single multi-hour ad? Want to remove certain parts of your favorite website(s) that irk you? Wanna bypass paywalls or annoying overlay popups that otherwise prevent you from obtaining the info you're looking for? Manage browser tabs better? Bookmarks? Password Managers? Have sensitive eyes?

I could go on, but I'm glad I live in a world where people can and do make browser extensions and other similar apps, if for no other reason than improved quality of life. The world is a lot less overwhelming when you have more of a say for what does/doesn't go on in your own life. Thanks for coming to my #TedTalk / Rambling, lol.

[amphobet]

Google's trying to DRM the internet, and we have to make sure they fail