4 Privacy and Security Extensions for Firefox

Suggested by this article from PewResearchcenter and other articles people do want control in regard to their online presence. 59% of the people questioned in the linked article say they should have the ability so use the internet completely anonymously and 81% claim to have used something to conceal their online identities.

Following this trend I want to encourage even more people to protect their privacy. I also suggest taking a look at the Privacy page over at EFF.

Let me first mention that most browsers support plugins which are similar to the ones I mention below – but for this blog post I will suggest some extensions for Mozilla Firefox because it is my primary browser. For the web to remain open in the future I believe Mozilla Firefox is the most viable alternative.

These are the four extensions to Mozilla Firefox I believe everybody should be using.

NoScript

NoScript effectively stops intrusive javascript tracking, flash and other media which all are means to pass on trackers and other nasty stuff. It is very strict and disables all scripts by default. A lot of the sites you visit will break. Only by explicitly whitelisting the sites you can make sure they all work as expected. This may be a bit tiresome at first but is worthwhile once you have a basic configuration going.

NoScript can be found over at the Firefox Add-on page.

uBlock Origin

While ad blockers may be a given I believe uBlock Origin to be the best one. To make the most out of it make sure you enable the privacy and social filters under the section 3rd Party Filters of the options pane. uBlock Origin also has one more benefit compared to Adblock Plus in that they do not accept money to have advertisements marked as acceptable (in other words they get paid to not block certain ads).

uBlock Origin can be found here.

Privacy Badger

Privacy Badger takes notice if your web browser is served images or other resources in a way that may directly track or assist in tracking you. It does so by looking at cookies and other data which may be directly linked to you. It may break some pages but this is easily fixes in the interface by adjusting the slider for the offending domain.

Privacy Badger can be found on the Firefox Add-ons page.

HTTPS Everywhere

In short this extension will redirect you to a secure and encrypted version of a web page if you try to visit their non-secure version. The non-secure web pages transport their information in clear text – allowing for anyone with access to the transported data and to intercept your communications. For more information on HTTPS I recommend you to read this great article by Mashable.

The extension may be downloaded here.