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Five privacy protection Firefox add-ons for Data Privacy Day
If you're reading Download Squad, you already know all of these classics. Kudos to you! Now go ahead and let your less computer-savvy coworkers or family members read this list, and make sure they install at least one of these if they use Firefox at all.
- HTTPS Everywhere is an add-on by the beardies over at the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). It forces Firefox to communicate using HTTPS (secure HTTP) with a number of major websites, such as Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, PayPal and others.
- Ghostery focuses on those corporations and institutions bent on tracking your movements around the Web (or on their own websites). It detects when you're being tracked by Google Analytics, Facebook and over 400 other ad networks, and provides an easy way to block those tracking mechanisms while leaving all other JavaScript functionality intact.
- Web of Trust provides a clear "traffic light" indication showing which sites you can trust with your credit card details, and which sites you should be leery of. The ratings are user-generated, and you don't have to access the actual website in question to view them – they show up right on the search results page when you use Google, Yahoo!, Bing and even Wikipedia.
- NoScript is somewhat similar to Ghostery mentioned above, in that it also blocks JavaScript. But it's a more extreme solution: Rather than just block trackers, it implements a "white list", blocking all JavaScript except for scripts running on domains you trust. One of its many advantages is that it protects against cross-site scripting attacks.
- BetterPrivacy protects you against a different kind of cookie – one that you can't flush just by clearing your browser history. These cookies are called Local Storage Objects, or Flash cookies, and are put on your computer using the Flash plug-in. BetterPrivacy scrubs these cookies off your system every time your exit your browser.
[Image credit: dcJohn]
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsGardiner WestboundJan 28th 2011 3:36PM
The Firefox Beef Taco (Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out) add-on stops behavioral advertising for over 100 advertising networks.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/beef-taco-targeted-advertising/
KualaBeeJan 28th 2011 6:42PM
adblock plus with "better privacy" filter
David AtkinsonJan 28th 2011 8:04PM
In addition to some of the stuff that's already listed here, I use Adblock Plus with the BetterPrivacy filter subscription. From what I can gather, it does the same thing as Ghostery without the need for an additional add-on, but the downside is that it doesn't allow nearly as much control over what you let through and what you don't.
I'm actually giving Ghostery a try right now. I'm not sure if I really need the granular control, but hey, it's free.
DapperJan 28th 2011 11:41PM
Personally, I think WOT is a complete waste of time. Last time I tried it, it flagged all sorts of innocuous sites as potentially bad, simply because those that had flagged the site, didn't understand what they were looking at.
I currently use, NoScript, Adblock Plus with a variety of 'Fanboys' filters, Better Privacy, Ghostery and an extension you didn't mention, RequestPolicy which is a wonderful addition to NoScript.
DonFeb 2nd 2011 12:41AM
I use Privoxy and safe surfing. ;)