Thanks ardvark. But see Higgsboson's post. It's open source but with a caveat. (Even the good guys turn out to be somewhat bad.)

it often is.
it's been an ongoing discussion for years.

but hey, you've had plenty of input and you need to take it all in now.

and you should know that NOT using any of these addons will NOT give you viruses or some such.
it's mostly about privacy, and about reducing the load on your system.

also none of the things discussed here (cookies, domains, scripts) are inherently good or bad, but most of them have the potential to be intrusive.

also, you can never avoid it completely.

Yeah, I get a kick out of people saying stuff online is free. Very little online is free. But linux is pretty cool in that regard. Very cool.

I am fairly certain that, using a combination of IP address tracking and "browser fingerprinting" Google and other entities which serve code to many sites could track any and all individuals with a few statistical tools -- the data will just "open up".
If they're doing that then there is no way around it other than TOR and random MAC addresses.
For the rest of us we do things like clear history and cookies after every session and the like.

1 members found this post helpful.

Ah yes. It would appear that if you 'temporarily allow' a site, then it goes to the whitelist automatically. So if you re-open your browser, it should no longer be on the whitelist (hence temporary).
To make a site 'permanent' on the whitelist, hover over the Noscript icon and near the bottom of the list select 'Make page permissions permanent' (after you've 'allowed' a site).

Some sites will become permanent on the whitelist if you allow it often enough. That's Noscript making things easy for you. But you can always take them off again (if you want) by selecting 'Remove selected site' on the whitelist tab.
Also, Noscript comes with a default whitelist of sites. Sometimes it will add more sites to the whitelist as 'trusted'. Again, you can manually take them off.

I see. In which case, best to tinker with the whitelist and keep an eye on it periodically.
I must admit sometimes I look at the whitelist and see google.com! But I do have to 'allow' it when I login to YT. So keeping an eye on your witelist is probably a good idea.

It's better to allow the whole page until you get used to it. Since if you don't have it, you'd be doing that anyway!

That's unusual.

1 members found this post helpful.

I agree. Google APIs is a toolkit to add functionality to a page. Many sites use it and it's not clear whether the toolkit is dodgy or not.
My browser is set to never remember history or accept cookies. Although I don't know where cookies are kept on a debian system and simply hope it's deleted after every session!

1 members found this post helpful.

Dunno about Adblock, but Adblock Plus has controversially whitelisted some advertisers, which I suppose might also come with some privacy implications.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbloc...d_whitelisting

I prefer uBlock Origin, which doesn't collect data on the user. It works very well for me.

Other Firefox privacy-related plugins I recommend:
- Https everywhere
- Disconnect
- BetterPrivacy (deletes LSOs) - this one is brilliant/seemingly little known. Enter settings and tell it to delete Flash cookies/LSOs on startup, exit and immediately after they are placed on your 'puter.
- Privacy Badger

---

For a more detailed How-To on Firefoxing whilst avoiding advertisers, tracking, LSOs and all that nasty stuff see these links:

https://www.privacytools.io/#about_config

and

https://www.privacytools.io/#webrtc

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks a lot for the explanations, Higgsboson. I'm getting it. I don't think I necessarily need to allow the whole page to use a site though, do I? (Some of those sites have seven or eight domains that would be activated.) And I don't have the yellow bars (which is probably a good thing--or is it?) and I don't see a NoScript icon on my whitelist window (which is kind of a bad thing because I would like to know how to make things permanent). Could you point it out to me in my screenshot? Thanks.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Thanks a lot, Zdenko. I had Https everywhere and Disconnect but uBlock origin was a revelation and I ditched adblock plus and installed it. I'll need to get familiar with it, but there was some stuff on the whitelist already (see screenshot). Do I need any of that stuff or should I just delete it?

Aren't Privacy Badger and Disconnect doing the same thing? Do you have both of them at the same time?

Better Privacy is another revelation (as are Flash Cookies--geez, they seem like little malware--unbelievable). I am pretty low-tech but would like to try it. Do you think I'd be okay if I just left everything on the default setting with it?

And thanks for the great links!

Attached Thumbnails

 

Some replies:

I have not deleted it. Doesn't look harmful to me.

I think they overlap substantially. I've had no bad effects from running both. Privacy badger seems less mature, but I like the fact it comes directly from EFF. Disconnect has more stuff, e.g. for mobile - just in case you're interested: https://disconnect.me/

I change from the default settings: see attachment. Basically, I set it to delete LSOs within 1 second of receiving them, and all other delete options maxed. I've had absolutely no bad effects from any of this in terms of FF usability.

---

One more add-on I like:

- Click&Clean.

Admittedly, I don't know how trustworthy they are, so I feel less compelled to recommend them. But it's basically a one-button delete for all cookies, history, LSOs, etc. I attach my settings.

I like to hit the C&C icon every now and again just for good measure, or if I am changing what I do in a way that I don't want cookies to follow me to the next thing but don't want to close my browser.

One thing C&C seems to do is make Privacy Badger forget what it was supposed to be picking up from what you taught it. But Disconnect picks up the slack as I have them running side-by-side.

Finally, I use Firefox sync to make sure each instance of FF on other 'puters has the same setup. (But the options always need tweaking on new FFs).

Attached Thumbnails

   

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi Gregg,

I noticed you used xubuntu. I don't know if you know, but Ubuntu's Unity desktop sends (even ostensibly "local") searches to Amazon, which shows just how much Canonical care about privacy.

I guess you're not using Unity, in which case this doesn't affect you.
But you can disable the thing anyway (why not, right?)


sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping


Not really related to the original Google Tracking issue/Firefox privacy add-ons line, but I thought I'd throw this in since being stalked by Amazon isn't any better than being stalked by Google. And perhaps a Unity user will read this and find it informative. (More details here: http://www.howtogeek.com/126995/how-...us-unity-dash/)

I also disabled "Send reports to Canonical" in Kubuntu.

I'm quietly hoping that's all I have to worry about on the 'buntus, but something tells me a move to another distro would be wise. Problem is, I'm basically a noob on linux, so I'm hunting around for user-friendly options.

Anyway, that's by-the-by. Just thought I'd throw that 'buntu thing in for completeness.

Hi ardvark. An update. It seems to me Ghostery works better than Disconnect. I noticed that my Bit Defender was reporting cookies on some sites and Disconnect wasn't picking them up, whereas Ghostery was.

Read about Ghostery's business model:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Business_model

Not true of Disconnect.

Food for thought.

Hi Zdenko,

You know what, I deleted that stuff. It seemed pertinent to just about nothing. I'll see if it affects anything.

I was excited too that Privacy Badger came from EFF but Privacy Badger just seems weird. It's "learning" about what to block. LOL 'These might be tracking you.' LOL
Thanks for the screenshot. I'm thinking I'm going to hold off on this one for a while. Seems just a touch complicated at this point.

Thanks for the reminder about Click N Clean. I actually put it on my sister's work Windows computer and she loves it. I didn't even think about it for Linux. (I added it. But I have so many icons I can't see its! I'll trust it's working. (I configured it on the add-on page.))

Did you mean Session Sync (screenshot)? I couldn't find Firefox sync. This would be very handy.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Don't hold it off. It's set it and forget it stuff. Try my settings. All they do is remove those nasty LSOs at every opportunity and without even bothering you. Nothing to it. I've had this set up for ages, works all the time, never had a problem. The only time you'll hear from the BP add-on is when it updates during a FF startup every month or so. Then just close the tab.


No. It's not an add-on. It somes with FF. You just need to set up a Firefox account.
It can choose what it syncs. Options are: bookmarks, history, addons, etc. (I don't keep history as I don't like storing any info on where I've been.) When you log into the account from another FF on another 'puter, it will install all your add-ons, etc.

See here for a recent instruction video on how to set up the account:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq-QjHrnv3E

This way, you don't have to worry about which add-ons to install all over again every time. You just need to set up the few settings. But that's quite simple. Just set Better Privacy to how I showed you, and in FF's settings, put the privacy tab as in the attachment.

Attached Thumbnails

 

1 members found this post helpful.