I love seeing all of these plugins, I use most of them for the various browsers.
What I'd love to know is what's the bare minimum of plugins I need to stop tracking (or as this page calls them, bugs).
For example, on Chrome, it seems to me that using Ghostery, Disconnect, SafeScript, AdBlock Plus and DoNotTrackMe are often overlapping in functionality. The less plugins my browser uses, the less chance of memory bloat (which I experience more as the browser ages).
The intention for the site design was that your minimum request is listed at the top, and then more stuff is in the other tools to consider section at the bottom.
I don't use any plugins installed in Chrome but get all of the same benefits (I believe). Here's how:
* restrict plugins like flash to click-to-play
* disable all javascript
* disable all cookies
Then whitelist the domains whose cookies and javascript you trust. The tools to do this are built into Chrome. It's a two- or three-click process upon visiting any site to whitelist its javascript and select which cookies to accept from a list. I have been browsing this way for about three years now and it's really quite nice once you get used to every site on the entire web being broken when you first visit.
Not really. It seems that every Android app I consider installing lately requests the "Phone Calls" permission, in order to grab my device ID. I believe there is an analytics library that most apps use now which relies on that to track users.
If you have a rooted Android phone I think you can install an app that lets you selectively reject permissions for new apps though.
Is there any FF/Crome add-on that simulates the most frequent configuration setup? There got to be some out-of-the-box setups, that lets one fade into the mist of computer illiterates.
There isn't an add-on, else it would be in that list. But we do got TOR Browser, which is optimized to be untrackable, out-of-the-box, with the standard configuration. Even when using it outside the TOR network, you are better off than with all of these add-ons (mostly because of browser fingerprinting that the OP's suggested configuration is succeptible to).
Beware though that not all sites will work with TOR browser out of the box (because of noscript blocking js), but it is fairly easy to whitelist the js code you need to make them functional.
Even with all these tools the oldest form of tracking will still work perfectly, your IP address. Use a VPN as well as these tools if you really take your privacy seriously.
Wouldn't Tor be better? With a VPN, consecutive requests will still come from the same address, making it possible for a malicious network to track that address across sites. Tor can be configured to use a different exit node per host, or even per request.
A VPN that shares IPs between many users won't have that issue. You'll have hundreds of users using an IP at the same time as well as thousands over the period of a day.
15 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 35.6 ms ] threadWhat I'd love to know is what's the bare minimum of plugins I need to stop tracking (or as this page calls them, bugs).
For example, on Chrome, it seems to me that using Ghostery, Disconnect, SafeScript, AdBlock Plus and DoNotTrackMe are often overlapping in functionality. The less plugins my browser uses, the less chance of memory bloat (which I experience more as the browser ages).
If you have a rooted Android phone I think you can install an app that lets you selectively reject permissions for new apps though.
Is there any FF/Crome add-on that simulates the most frequent configuration setup? There got to be some out-of-the-box setups, that lets one fade into the mist of computer illiterates.
Beware though that not all sites will work with TOR browser out of the box (because of noscript blocking js), but it is fairly easy to whitelist the js code you need to make them functional.