this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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privacy

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Big tech and governments are monitoring and recording your eating activities. c/Privacy provides tips and tricks to protect your privacy against global surveillance.

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Goodbye Chrome. It was great while it lasted. (lemmy.ca)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I'm fucking done with Chrome. Fuck this.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Firefox it is and was for over a decade and more. Add uBlock Origin, uMatrix and some smaller stuff and the web suddenly becomes accessible.

[–] Jax 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Can you provide a list of the smaller stuff? Been meaning to switch to Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Add-Ons I have installed are:

  • uBlock Origin
  • uMatrix (sadly deprecated)
  • Privacy Badger, shows/blocks trackers that made it through uBlock/uMatrix (which are not many if at all)
  • Decentraleyes, which caches libraries from CDNs so you don't connect to these central servers again, disclosing your usage pattern
  • Cookie AutoDelete, mostly optional but clears cookies while browser is running and not only on close
  • DarkReader, so bright pages go dark
  • Sidebery, for organizing tabs (I miss true tab groups in Firefox, but only a bit)
[–] Jax 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You're welcome. I made a last-minute edit to complete the list.

[–] Jax 5 points 10 months ago

Double thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Thanks!!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Firefox actually has most privacy stuff you need built-in nowadays. There are surprisingly few steps you need to harden it after install (on both desktop and mobile):

  • Install the uBlock Origin extension.
  • Switch Enhanced Tracking Protection to "strict".
  • Turn on HTTPS-only mode in all tabs.

Optionally:

  • Switch your search engine away from Google. I've been using DuckDuckGo with zero problems for years, but there are others.
  • Install the multi-containers extension, it can be used to load websites in isolated color-coded tabs so no data "leakage" can occur.

You do not need any other extension. There is some advanced stuff for fingerprinting protection but they can do more harm than good if you don't know what you're doing. Stick to the above, update Firefox when prompted and that's all.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I love the possibility to have uBlock Origin on mobile. I have Privacy Badger and Decentraleyes installed as well. Toolbar on bottom is another thing I can't live without anymore. That's configurable through settings.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

You can use uBlock Origin on mobile in the Firefox nightly build.

In the nightly build, you get to use pretty much all addons from desktop.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yup, solid advices.

I would add disabling recommendations for Add-Ons and Themes and clearing the initial default bookmarks.

Of course you can pimp it out like setting config properties to enable experimental stuff like Wayland, WebRender, hardware decoding, etc. pp. before they get enabled by default in later releases.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I've noticed DDG giving poor results lately and definitely putting me in a bubble. No matter what it gives hyper local results.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Same, I tried it for a while a few months ago but it never gave me as good results as Google. I'm very aware of the enshittification and will switch away as soon as I notice it not showing me what I want, though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

For the record I find it miles better than google, I just think they are getting to be more like Google in their results being tailored.

When I search something I want to learn about I'll often get local examples whereas I used to get the wiki or some general discussions.

When I google it I get ads and pictures of myself in the shower.

[–] Jax 1 points 10 months ago

Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

uMatrix has been abandoned hasn't it? I thought the dev had incorporated some of uMatrix into uBlock?

Am I wrong in believing this?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yes, it's true uMatrix isn't in dev anymore and supposedly stuff has been incorporated to uBlock but I still feel more at home with uMatrix and it's much more convenient to use and much stricter.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

There was a negative vote; care to explain?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Firefox, and Vivaldi for the occasional site that doesn't work on Gecko. (They're built on the Chromium engine, but absolutely refusing to implement this crap)