Firefox privacy install checklist

firefoxinstallchecklist.md

Firefox install checklist

WARNING: Mozilla has a habit of changing the order and content of Firefox settings on different platforms and between versions (they seem to especially enjoy stripping options out of their mobile versions). Those changes may not be reflected here (I already have a day job).

Installation

The following procedure was tested with Firefox 136 (64-bit) on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS running the default Gnome desktop.

For Ubuntu Desktop I use the binary installer (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/) and basically follow the official documentation for system installation [1]. To allow automatic updates I set permissions so my user has write permissions over /opt/firefox (on my systems I'm a member of the local staff group, so I do sudo chown -R root:staff /opt/firefox; sudo chmod -R g+w /opt/firefox). I also open firefox.desktop and explicitly set the Icon path to /opt/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png. [2]

Post install customization

BetterFox (https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox) provides a user.js with common sense security and privacy settings that address most of what I previously needed to configure by hand. I am not keen on privacy-free search engines like Google, and even less keen on "AI-powered answer engines" like Perplexity AI (no futrher comment due to pending intellectual property infringement litigation).

For the record, these are the settings I usually like to change after installation:

1. General:
   • Make Firefox the default browser
   • Website appearance, Automatic
   • DRM content, enable
2. Home:
   • Set a custom URL as the homepage
   • New tabs to Homepage
   • Firefox Home content, disable all
3. Search:
   • Set Default Search to DuckDuckGo
   • Address bar, disable Suggestions from Firefox, Suggestions from sponsors
   • Search Shortcuts: uncheck Perplexity (AI), Amazon.com, Bing.com, eBay
4. Privacy and Security:
   • Strict tracking protection
   • Website privacy preferences, disable
   • Cookies and site data, disable
   • Passwords, disable
   • Autofill, disable
   • Firefox data collection, disable
   • Website advertising preferences, disable [2]
   • HTTPS-only mode, disable
   • DNS over HTTPS, Off
5. Sync: Enable and setup as directed by the wizard
6. Themes: Dark
7. Install extensions:
   • uBlock Origin
   • Bitwarden
   • Dark Reader (post-cataract surgery, this is now set to "Off" but ready when I need it)

References

[1] "Install Firefox from Mozilla builds: System Firefox installation", Mozilla Support, https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-linux.

[2] Here's the text of my firefox.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Firefox Web Browser
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
GenericName=Web Browser
Keywords=Internet;WWW;Browser;Web;Explorer
Exec=firefox %u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=/opt/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;x-scheme-handler/chrome;video/webm;application/x-xpinstall;
StartupNotify=true