Ublock Origin is an obvious one, but I also can’t stand not having Foxy Gestures anymore. It adds customizable mouse gestures, so you can set it up to have easy swipes to go back a page, reload a page, close a tab, etc, and it feels wonderful and smooth to use compared to just using the traditional buttons to do everything. Honestly it’s kinda wild to me that this isn’t more popular now that people are so used to phone gestures. It’s good for the same reasons!
Question: Does anyone know what security and privacy extensions are considered redundant in light of recent Firefox improvements in the past few years?
For example, I saw several people recommend Privacy Badger for example. I thought I heard somewhere that was considered not needed now. I do not know for sure so am frankly confused by this and some of the other extensions which I too use to use.
For me I have kind of stopped using most security/privacy extensions except uBlockOrigin and then just configuring Firefox rather tightly. Not sure if this is best approach or not. On one hand every extension increases the attack surface and the uniqueness of the browser so there is a point about less is better, on the other hand some may be useful too.
Thoughts? Thanks.
AFAIK you don’t need HTTPS Everywhere as Firefox has a built-in setting for that, and Ublock Origin covers most privacy extensions when using “hard mode” like Privacy Badger, Ghostery, DDG Privacy Essentials, ClearURLs…
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Mixed_content/How_to_fix_website_with_mixed_content
Less is more when it comes to privacy extensions. You only really need UBlock Origin and that’s it. Perhaps CanvasBlocker on FF if not using the Resist Fingerprinting setting, or JShelter if using a Chromium-based browser to fool naive fingerprinting scripts.
I see a bunch of people here still running Decentraleyes etc. when most of the local resources that extension provides are now over 4 years out of date and wouldn’t be used over the newer versions delivered by remote CDNs anyway.
That said, while it is true that adding extensions will change your fingerprint, you’re pretty much uniquely fingerprintable anyway due to a million other data points on a daily driver browser. If you’re seriously looking to avoid being fingerprinted by more advanced fingerprinting scripts, running something like the TOR Browser or Mullvad Browser without changing anything will help since you’ll blend in with anyone else using those very specific configurations.
i disagree. with this and parent comment.
i would argue: more is more.
the devil is in the details and how u choose to implement your system efficiently.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/chameleon-ext/
i guess one strategy is if u just need to have a smooth experience u can rapidly cut out cruft. this would lead to a much simpler experience and u would still retain a fair amount of privacy.
personally… i would rather have all privacy switches available… even if i rarely choose to have them enabled.
decentraleyes, https everywhere, privacy badger, duckduckgo essentials are the ones i know that are not needed with ublock origins + firefox’s strict tracking protection
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/total-cookie-protection-and-website-breakage-faq#w_what-is-the-difference-between-enhanced-tracking-protection-and-total-cookie-protection
" Enhanced Tracking Protection
blocks cookies from companies that have been identified as trackers.
Total Cookie Protection
is an additional privacy protection built into Enhanced Tracking Protection. Total Cookie Protection provides more comprehensive protections against cookie-based tracking to ensure that no cookies can be used to track you from site to site as you browse the web. "