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
I like Firefox. But, I don’t know why, I still prefer using a Chromium-based browser like Brave. Wow, I didn’t know there is an extension called “Allow Right-Click”. I find that annoying for some sites that disable users using right click, I usually want to open the link in the new tab then I use (Ctrl+Left Click) instead
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
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.
Just my password manager and uBlock Origin :)
uBO, of course.
LibRedirect for automatically opening Youtube, Twitter, TikTok etc. links in their privacy-focused front-ends. I just make sure to disable all the instances by esmailelbob since he’s a little homophobic shithead
Buster for automatic captcha solving
Consent-O-Matic automatically clicks through cookies banner to deny all the cookies that aren’t necessary, which I like better than just hiding the cookie banner
Redirect AMP to HTML because fuck AMP and fuck Googledeleted by creator
uBlock Origin definitely. I use KeePassXC’s browser extension, but if you’re using Bitwarden already then you’re probably fine on that.
My search engine of choice is SearX, as DuckDuckGo’s results are just a frontend for Bing, i.e. not favorable to me.
I use SearxNG as well. I run my own instance and IMO it’s the best option for me.
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
Thank you so much for this great feedback! I will adjust my habits.
Unnecessary, as uBO has removeparam
and there’s a neat list that uses it for stripping a shitload of tracking parameters at https://github.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/blob/master/LegitimateURLShortener.txt
I think that privacy badger is kind of obselete along side uBlock Origin, because Ublock Origin can already do what privacy badger does
Besides the typical privacy-oriented Firefox extensions, I love Sidebery. It’s by far the best tree-style tab add-on I’ve ever seen. Beautiful and powerful.
hmmm, and it says it works well with containers … I’ll give it a go as well, thank you :)
Yes! :)
You can organize your tabs into panels (little side tabs for tabs :P) and groups (collapsible tab folders for organization inside a panel). You can set colors, set containers, move to panels and windows. You can duplicate, unload, clear cookies. You can flatten trees and mute tabs. You can set up automatic snapshots to manage your sessions.
You get the gist, it’s super powerful.
uBlock Origin, Sponsorblock, Privacy Badger, Bitwarden.
One that I use which I haven’t seen mentioned is Fast Forward
sponsorblock’s built into piped btw, i’d recommend using that over youtube, no ads as well as being more private
I use LibreTube on my phone, so I’m not sure why I haven’t switched over on PC. I’ll look into it, thanks
Privacy Badger
You might want to reconsider that https://adtechmadness.wordpress.com/2020/03/27/detecting-privacy-badgers-canvas-fp-detection/
It’s really unnecessary with anything that uBO offers.
Maybe this is the wrong way to think, but I use it even though I’m aware of this because although I have nothing but respect for Raymond Hill, I personally find it unwise to rely on a tool with just one developer, and I’m hoping EFF will continue to support Privacy Badger.
1.Ublock Origin, ublock is really cool and you can even add filter lists to it for example i found one for filtering ip grabbers (https://github.com/piperun/iploggerfilter) 2. Containers 3. NoScript (Its like ublock origin but for java script) 4. Skip Redirect the arkenfox guy recommended it. 5. VoilentMonkey (I use it for scripts like youtube age verification bypass and undiscord) 6. Return youtube dislikes 7. Sponsor Block
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.
Bitwarden, ublock Origin.
+1 They’re too good to not use.
If you’re paying to use Kagi, why not just try using Mullvad’s Leta? It’s the same thing, but priced more reasonably and includes a great VPN.
I’m kind of using 2 browser currently Brave/Librewolf. Been thinking of trying out Brave for a while now so here we are. On brave I just have Bitwarden, LocalCDN & SponsorBlock. On Librewolf I have Bitwarden, uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock, User-Agent Switcher, CanvasBlocker & Reddit Enhancement Suite.
