There are a bunch of privacy enhancing and ad-blocking extensions out there, but it's impossible to figure out where their features are unique and where they overlap. Of course, too much overlap, and they start slowing down your browser.<p>My goal is to make my browser as private as possible with minimal damage to my usual browsing experience. For example:<p>- LSO and Flash: Blocked.
- As many third party cookies blocked as possible without breakage.
- JavaScript works most of the time?
- Ads are blocked
- Various forms of fingerprinting are blocked/disabled
- HTTPS is used as much as possible
- etc.<p>I'm currently using Privacy Badger + uBlock Origin + HTTPS Everywhere. It feels like a lot already, but there's also Ghostery, RequestPolicy, and a million others.
> Various forms of fingerprinting are blocked/disabled<p>Be very careful with that. If you're one the few who have the features disabled on a compatible browser, you make your configuration more unique and it becomes easy to identify you.<p>I'd would also advice not to spoof the User-Agent since the browser can be detected thanks to other parameters and if those ones contradict the User-Agent that's a very specific fingerprint.<p>I'd also advice not to enable the DNT (Do Not Track) header since it does nothing at all and is used by a minority, so it increases your entropy too.<p>The combination of your three extensions is very fine as far as I can tell. This is what I would advice in addition to them:<p>- Whitelist <i>first-party</i> cookie. Make them be deleted when you close the browser (in the privacy settings of Firefox) and whitelist the few sites you need them to be remembered. To whitelist a site on Firefox, click on the thing at the left of its url on the address bar (either a planet or a lock), click on 'More informations...', go to the Permissions tab, scroll to 'Set cookie', uncheck 'Use default' and click the 'Allow' radio button.<p>Many websites include arbitrary JavaScript that they grabbed in the documentation of some statistic tool or something like that. Such scripts, running directly in the site's pages, can then access first-party cookies.<p>- Use something else than Google. If you can't deprive yourself of Google results relevance, then use StartPage, it's a Google proxy. They make money by displaying non-targeted self-hosted ads. Unfortunately, I fear that Google might be able to identify you thanks to your queries themselves. Otherwise, just use DuckDuckGo.<p>- Use your history and bookmarks. Search engines are for discovering new content. To find something you have already seen or to reach a website you already visited, use your history. Ctrl+Shift+H. Or just type some word you remember in the address bar and pick the correct suggestion.<p>- Use search keywords (<a href="https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar" rel="nofollow">https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...</a>). They allow you to associate a keyword to about any search form anywhere and then search this form directly in the address bar. This also will reduce your search engine usage.<p>You should also know that when your browser performs a third-party request, the recipient of the request can know the page you're coming from thanks to the HTTP referer header. It can be disabled in about:config (<a href="http://www.technipages.com/firefox-enable-disable-referrer" rel="nofollow">http://www.technipages.com/firefox-enable-disable-referrer</a>), but I'm not sure it would be a good idea, first because of what I've said about fingerprints in the beginning, second because it might break some websites.
I use uBlock Origin [1] along with the EFF's Privacy Badger [2].<p>Hard to say how well it really works for privacy without really digging in to exactly what private info I'm leaking across the web but I haven't seen an ad in ages.<p>[1] <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.eff.org/privacybadger" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/privacybadger</a>
You're pretty much covered. uBlock Origin + Privacy Badger is awesome.<p>You can add something like Tab Cookies or Self Destructing Cookies.
You can also add something like uMatrix to the mix.<p>If you really want to go far, add a "User-Agent Switcher" type extension.<p>I wouldn't add more than this though, it starts to be overkill. Also do note: I used to use noscript and it works well, but going from 0 JS on a domain to all JS on a domain isn't ideal. If you want ultimate security, add noscript as well but maintain the others so that when you whitelist a url you can still expect to be safe.
> My goal is to make my browser as private as possible with minimal damage to my usual browsing experience.<p>Not very long ago I wrote a guide documenting my specific configuration which has precisely this goal in mind [1].<p>The short version: disable third-party cookies, enable tracking protection (Firefox only), use uBlock Origin with some extra filters, use HTTPS everywhere, Enforce Click-to-Play and Disable Unnecessary Plug-ins.<p>One tweak I don't cover in the guide that I think I like is disabling custom fonts. In Firefox this is under Options > Content > Advanced > uncheck "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above". The privacy benefit here is probably negligible, but I quite like that I don't have to wait for giant remote fonts on everyone's blog to load.<p>[1] <a href="https://brashear.me/blog/2015/08/11/hardening-firefox-to-protect-privacy/" rel="nofollow">https://brashear.me/blog/2015/08/11/hardening-firefox-to-pro...</a>
I use uBlock Origin to block ads and Ghostery to block social media foo (and trackers, of course). Ghostery makes it easy to enable stuff you want to use all the time (Gravatar, Typekit, etc.) and to temporarily enable stuff like Twitter buttons, Soundcloud player, etc. On top of that I use HTTPS Everywhere.<p>When I feel the need for real privacy I use the Tor Browser.<p>// Oh, and I also disable all the fancy features in Chrome and most plugins.
I use HTTPS Everywhere, uBlock Origin, Random Agent Spoofer with almost everything checked, Self Destructing Cookies and uMatrix.<p>I do not recommend Ghostery at all, since it is closed source and it collects your data through GhostRank, if enabled.
In addition to all the plugins that everyone has listed, I'm also interested in hearing about the default settings that should/need to be disabled in Chrome or Firefox so as to prevent most/all of the "dial-home" features. For example, unchecking the features in Chrome > Settings > Show advanced settings > Privacy, like "Use a web service to detect spelling errors" or the offer to translate pages further below.<p>While perhaps not as potentially malicious as 3rd party websites, I think that a discussion regarding privacy in web browsers themselves is a useful one.<p>Some discussion here: <a href="http://thesimplecomputer.info/the-private-life-of-chromium-browsers" rel="nofollow">http://thesimplecomputer.info/the-private-life-of-chromium-b...</a>
If you're willing to go through the headaches of having to reload some pages multiple times, a combination of NoScript and RequestPolicy Continued (not the original RequestPolicy) may be your best bet.<p>For sites that you visit regularly you can simply whitelist them; for rarer sites you may have to reload pages 2-4 times as you allow requests out to CDNs, etc. and allow JS.<p>I run that way in Firefox as my daily driver, but have Chrome much less locked down with uBlock Origin for things that I just can't get working right. Chrome is also the only version of Flash installed.<p>I also tend to do most purchasing (or at least checkouts) in Chrome - annoying to get stuff all set then have the order go screwy because you have to reload the payments page several times to make it work.
Few folk using Ghostery... but I thought Ghostery was the plugin backed by the advertising industry that just fed your data back to them anyway?<p>I use AdBlock (original) and Disconnect. Perhaps Disconnect does something with my data too<i>shrug</i>
here its a performance review of some of them uBlock origin seems the best performance wise, <a href="https://www.raymond.cc/blog/10-ad-blocking-extensions-tested-for-best-performance/view-all/" rel="nofollow">https://www.raymond.cc/blog/10-ad-blocking-extensions-tested...</a>
Drop this in your hosts file and set up a refresh script to replace it periodically.<p><a href="http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts" rel="nofollow">http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts</a>
Flash is not installed, so there is no need to block.
For Adblocking I use Bluhell Firewall, to stop tracking Ghostery and Self-destructing cookies. On top of that I run noScript to kill remaining junk.
And because I like to encrypt: HttpsEverywhere.
I use Ghostery, uBlock and ClickToPlugin on Safari, and stopped using any other extensions since I came across a couple that were trojans for injecting ads.