Firefox has proprietary spyware and a lot of other no-no's. Let's check the configuration parameters and walk through some fixes.

I'm sorry, Firefox

I love Firefox. Firefox is great. In fact, it is one of the best browsers out there that actually cares about transparency and user privacy. But I have to say - They've been f**king up a lot lately. More and more spyware, unnecessary little scripts, data collectors and other nonsense has found it's way into Firefox.

The user Haasn has contributed a list of hacks you can apply in order to fix Firefox i.e. make it secure.

To access this settings page you have to type the following in your Firefox address bar:

about:config

And then click "I accept the risk!".

Let's fix this baby

I will walk you through some of the settings and which parameters you should change in order to restore a Firefox that actually keeps your personal data private.

1. WebRTC

Definetely Nr.1 on my list. This is an inner-browser communication standard which is used for chat systems (facebook messenger, skype etc). The problem is it also uncovers you real IP when you are using a VPN which is referred to as "RTC leak". If you are using a VPN you should set variables to false. It will hide your IP but disable all video call functions. Set it back to true if you want to make a call.

media.peerconnection.enabled=false
loop.enabled=false

2. Pocket

Seems like a cool bookmark feature. But it's actually proprietary tie-in trash. Delete.

1. Drag the “pocket” icon off your toolbar (!)
2. Change parameter:

browser.pocket.enabled=false

3. Geolocation

Well the title says it all, this privacy violation can be used for tracking and fingerprinting services on the web.

browser.beacen.enabled=false
geo.enabled=false
geo.wifi.logging.enabled=false
geo.wifi.uri=""

4. Safe Browsing

So Firefox has to communicate with a third party for Safe Browsing which is Google by default. Also it sends metadata about your downloads.

browser.safebrowsing.enabled=false
browser.safebrowsing.downloads.enabled=false
browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled=false

Wait, are you telling me that the privacy feature of Firefox is actually sending data to Google?

5. Statistics tracking

Yeah, the usual statistics for "improving customer experience" and what not. I don't like it.

datareporting.healthreport.service.enabled=false
datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled=false
toolkit.telemetry.enabled=false

6. Device tracking/statistics

Just reading these parameters makes me uneasy. These can be used to fingerprint your system and track you.

device.sensors.enabled=false
camera.control.face_detection.enabled=false
camera.control.autofocus_moving_callback.enabled=false

You can find a complete list of Firefox hacks (optimizations) here: https://gist.github.com/haasn

EDIT: @finde contributed pointing out that you can easily do the above steps by replacing the user.js file in your Firefox folder: https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js

Before you start:

1. You should know what you are doing.
2. If you apply all steps, many features of Firefox will become unusable.
3. Some apps may stop working altogether.
4. You will have a optimized Firefox in terms of security - not in terms of functionality.
5. Every step is reversible by changing the parameters in

   about:config

   to their previous value.
6. It might take you a while to figure out which parameter caused some feature to break.

As always, I'm here to help if you get stuck!

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information sources:

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