Firefox is a very powerful browser that lets you be in control of your browser experience
entirely.
With the right tweaks, not only can you significantly boost your privacy and security unparalleled
to any other browser out there, you’ll also double your rendering speeds and lower your
bandwidth and memory usage.
Getting maximum privacy and security will require to go through a plethora of settings
Firefox allows you to change, as well as installing a selection of privacy enhancing extensions
that will protect your privacy even more.
Going through all these steps is absolutely worth it, because your browsing habits reveal
a lot about your personal life.
Unfortunately, default Firefox settings don’t really protect your privacy that much so let’s
change that.
Right of the bat, go to “Content blocking” and select “strict blocking”.
Don’t worry.
This is nowhere near so strict and will probably not break any website you visit.
If it does, all you need to do is to easily disable blocking for the current website.
You can see that upon visiting Reddit, Firefox is blocking Amazon ads and a Google tracking
script.
But there is so much more Firefox can do for us.
Scroll down to History and choose “Use custom settings for history”.
Check “Always use private browsing mode”.
This will restart your session and from now on, Firefox will be erasing almost all browser
data after you close it.
Is this necessary?
Yes.
Overtime, browsers can pile up insane amount of information about your browsing habits,
which is very revealing about your personality and is used by advertisers and political campaigners
to target you with ads.
If you are changing these settings on a Firefox you’ve been using for a while, you can easily
clear all previously stored data in privacy – Cookies and Site Data and under History
- “Clear History”.
Select everything and set time range to Everything.
Under Address Bar, uncheck suggestions for Browsing history, Bookmarks and Open Tabs.
This means your browser will not show you any suggestions in the URL bar as you type.
It prevents further collection of data potentially stored on your device.
Under permissions, go to settings for Location, Camera, Microphone and Notifications and select
“Block new requests asking to access” each of these parameters.
By default, Mozilla will collect some information from your Firefox.
This is not good.
But it’s easy to turn it off with a single click.
Blocking dangerous and deceptive content might be useful for secure browsing, but this service
is provided by Google Safe Browsing, which you actually don’t see here.
So I choose to not trust Google with my security.
Under search settings, I like to have a search bar that lets me more easily change my search
engine when I need to.
I always use more than one search engine especially when I am looking for news and political content.
Change your default search engine to duckduckgo and opt out of search suggestions so that
your search records aren’t shared with the provider.
I never use Google, Bing, Amazon or Twitter to search for anything so I always remove
them.
What I do use is startpage.
The easiest way to add new search engines is to just go to their website and Firefox
should automatically suggest it for you to add it.
Another private meta-search engine is Searx.
Searx.me instance is a pretty good start https://searx.me/ I like to clear my home page as well.
I don’t want Firefox to start with any website when I launch it.
So leave it at Firefox Home or set it to blank.
Opting out of top sites and highlights can be a minor privacy benefit as well.
If you are used to syncing, I would recommend against it.
If you need to transfer your Firefox data, you can always just manually copy your Firefox
profile folder and move into another device root directory.
You don’t have to transmit your browser data and settings over the Internet or you
can encrypt it yourself rather than trusting someone else.
To find your Firefox profile folder, type “about:profiles” into your Address bar
and Open Folder from the Root Director.
This is what you want to copy if you want to transfer your settings and bookmarks the
most secure way possible.
Now this should cover all the visible settings offered by Firefox.
But there is so much more under the hood.
To get under the hood, type “about:config’ in a new tab, hit enter and click “I accept
the risk!”.
This will show you all available settings that you can hard code into Firefox.
Some of these you should change, and some of these you shouldn’t touch at all.
Luckily, Firefox allows you to search for settings we need to tweak.
Privacytools.io has a compiled a list of settings that will significantly improve your private
browsing experience.
They start with disabling WebRTC leaks, which is useful if you want to use a VPN more securely.
You can either copy each individual setting and then make sure the value matches with
the recommendation on the website.
If it doesn’t, then double click on it to change it.
Do the rest with all the other recommendations.
All of the remaining privacy tweaks are copied from the official Mozilla wiki page.
If this sounds too daunting to you, there are utilities that claim to do something like
this for you.
But personally I am not sure if they make it any easier.
There is even an addon for this called Privacy Settings, which is pretty good.
But I like to do it manually.
You only have to do this once.
If you want to copy your settings, all you have to do is to copy your Firefox profile
into a new folder in the Root directory.
Now all of this makes Firefox a pretty powerful privacy browser.
But it can still use some help from extensions.
One of the most important step to take to browse privately is to learn to block scripts.
The quickest way to do this is to use NoScript Security Suite.
uBlock Origin and uMatrix also let you block scripts.
I have tutorials for all three so the choice is yours.
You can also combine NoScript to block scripts and uBlock Origin to block ads.
It is also possible to just use uBlock Origin to block scripts and ads with one addon.
The way I use it is that I go to uBlock Origin settings.
I check “I am an advanced user”, all privacy settings, and I disable media, remote fonts,
and JavaScript.
Then I go to Filter lists, and I check all uBlock filters, Malware Domains, and hpHosts’
Ad and tracking servers.
Then I open uBlock Origin menu and I set it to block all 3rd party requests.
It’s really incredible how powerful uBlock Origin can be.
With these simple tweaks, you can literally block all trackers, ads and malware on the
web.
It will be impossible for most websites to track you.
Especially in combination with compartmentalization, which I explain in my latest privacy tutorial.
I have explained how to use uBlock Origin in the past so I won’t go into detail here.
But these are the settings I use for maximum privacy.
There are other 3 addons that are very useful and that’s HTTPS Everywhere, which will
force encryption on websites that enabled it.
If you want to be more secure, you can set it to block all unencrypted connections.
Cookie Autodelete is fantastic at isolating and getting rid off cookies.
And DecentralEyes is very helpful at preventing content delivery networks from Google and
others to track your Internet activity.
Do you need any other extension for privacy and security?
Probably not.
Minimalism is a good approach when it comes to Internet privacy and security.
You don’t want to clutter your browser with too many extensions, a combination of which
can be used to identify you.
The only browser that gives you more privacy is Tor Browser Bundle, which gives you an
anonymous fingerprint and routes your traffic through Tor network.
What’s great is that all of these settings and addons can also be enabled on Firefox
mobile.
Although using a combination of browsers like Firefox Focus, DuckDuckGo, Privacy Browser
and WebApps will give you more granular control over compartmentalization of your Internet
presence.
And that’s it.
You have now configured Firefox settings for maximum privacy and security.
Congratulations.