¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

In this post I’ll show you a taste of what you can achieve with the Firefox Web Browser regarding privacy issues.

Motivated by PRISM, tailored ads, cookie tracking and several other inconvenient annoyances from the 2013 web, I think we should be more alerted and conscious about what companies are trying to do with our precious data. Maybe more important than only consciousness is that we should protect this data and act to do something about it.

The following is what I use (actually, what I’m trying to use) to “protect” myself. I recommend you to adopt all or some of these settings.

1 - Startpage Search Engine #

I’ve recently switched my default search engine from Google to Startpage. Please don’t get me wrong — I love Google, but I decided Google is tracking way too much of my search habits. Startpage uses Google as its backend engine, but it does that in a way Google can’t really link my searches to me. Besides, Startpage doesn’t store my IP Address.

If you want to definitively get rid of Google, try DuckDuckGo. You can integrate Startpage with Firefox by following this guide.

2 - Adblock Edge #

Add Adblock Edge to Firefox. It blocks nothing more than ads! I don’t recommend Adblock Plus anymore because it includes Google Ads by default. You can still use Adblock Plus by opting-out of this feature, but I disagree that it is enabled by default. It’s like the Amazon ads Canonical includes by default with Ubuntu.

I support some ads (like Reddit or Kongregate ones, for example) and I understand the web wouldn’t function right without them. However, I will not tolerate ads I haven’t requested getting in the way of my web experience. I advise you to enable ads for services and websites that you like. Think carefully about it — they may break if they don’t get revenue from ads. Adblock Edge is open source.

3 - Ghostery #

Add Ghostery to Firefox. It blocks several tracking and analytics services and URLs. You can be surprised to see how many tracking services are on popular websites like WSJ. My Ghostery has blocked at least 10 of them there.

Note: Ghostery is not open source — it is proprietary.

4 - Self-Destructing Cookies #

Add Self-Destructing Cookies to Firefox. It does exactly what you would expect: it destroys cookies from a tab as soon as you close it. You can control which websites won’t have their cookies automatically destroyed. If you don’t allow cookies for websites you use often, you’ll end up losing patience having to log in again every time you close all their tabs.

5 - NoScript #

Finally, add NoScript to Firefox. It is the wildcard of all these add-ons. You can selectively control which websites (domains) are allowed to execute scripts in your browser. You can block several malware vectors with it. If I had to choose only one add-on to use with Firefox, certainly I would choose NoScript.

Be aware that NoScript can be annoying at first. By default, all scripts are blocked, and you have to enable (add to its whitelist) the URLs you trust. You can enable the reverse behavior too: allow every script and block only ones you distrust (though this is a bit risky).

Conclusion #

This is a basic setup for someone who worries about web privacy. I won’t say it gets you 100% anonymous on the web because it doesn’t. There are more ways to get even more privacy (like Tor), but they’re beyond the scope of this post. Maybe I’ll write another post about those goodies.

Note: This is my first English post. It may have typos or grammatical errors, but I’m more focused on the content than perfection. If you spot any errors, please let me know in the comments or via email. Thank you for your patience!