Security and privacy are some of the major concerns these days while choosing a web browser to use. So much so that all the major players in the “browser wars” are providing or developing a private browsing mode.
Firefox with the myraid of add-ons that it has to offer is never far from action. Here are some of the top Firefox security and privacy addons that you should install for safer browsing.
Stealther
Stealther – Stealther provides you with what can be called a private browsing mode. It allows you to browse the web without leaving any trace. The addon disables browsing history, cookies, cache, recent tabs and sending of referrer header for as long as you want. It’s lot like the incognito mode in Google chrome. Distrust is another similar addon that allows you to acheive the similar results.
Close ‘n’ Forget
Close ‘n’ Forget – While Stealther and Distrust require you to turn on private browsing explicitly, what if you happen to stumble upon a site that you wished you would have known to turn on the private browsing mode for? Close ‘n’ Forget comes to your rescue. Just hit the special close button once you are finished and that site will be deleted from history and cookies cleared as if you had never visited the site.
WOT
WOT – We all know about the threats which surfers suffer like viruses, spywares, adware, malicious spam, phishing etc., but here Web of Trust comes to rescue. WOT warns you about risky websites that try to scam surfers before they enter in them using a safety rating of 21 million websites, WOT combines evidence collected from multiple sources. Not only does it help surfers but also sets a protection level for children by blocking inappropriate content.
NoScript
NoScript – An absolute must have security addon for your browser. NoScript gives you the power to specify the sites you trust and only those sites will be allowed to run active content like Javascript, Java code and other executable code. The addon thus protects you from cross-site scripting attacks and clickjacking attacks.
Panic
Panic – Panic allows you to instantly close all the open tabs and replace it with another tab of your choice. So next time while you are on facebook and your boss drops to check in just hit Alt + ` and you would be taken to predefined page in no time.
hideBad
hideBad – Hides bad things! Saves all the tabs, closes them and opens your home page. Allows you to clear history, cookies, cache and passwords at your will and then restore them later.
TabRenamizer / Page Title Eraser
TabRenamizer and Page Title Eraser – Do your tabs give you away? Why not change their names with TabRenamizer or remove the names all together with Page Title Eraser? Both these addons let you play with the tab titles so that you can change them according to your will.
Gish It / tEMPORARYiNBOX / spamavert
Gish It!, TemporaryInbox, spamavert – These addons allow you to protect your inboxes from Spam by getting throwaway email addresses to be used with web forms while registering for sites you are not sure about.
BetterPrivacy
BetterPrivacy – Now you don’t need to worry from anything like “˜you are being tracked..!!’ BetterPrivacy is a Super-Cookie Safeguard which protects from usually undeletable Flash-Cookies. It blocks long term tracking on Google, YouTube, Ebay to name a few.
Ghostery
Ghostery – It keeps an eye on the websites that are keeping an eye on you i.e. it finds out that which web sites which are tracking you and would alert you about the same.
Torbutton
Torbutton – It provides a button to securely and easily enable or disable the browser’s use of Tor. Tor can be used for anonymous browsing and has been covered on makeuseof in detail.
FoxyProx
FoxyProxy – FoxyProxy automatically switches an internet connection across one or more proxy servers based on URL patterns and switching rules defined by you.
JSview
JSview – Allows you to view the source code of external files like javascript and CSS files. Although it would require a bit of knowledge and looking through the code to determine if it really is harmful, it can be quite useful to see if there is some malicious code sending off your passwords to somewhere else.
If privacy and security are on top of your list check out how to remain safe on public computers and how to set up firefox to automatically clear sensitive data.
Did I miss any Firefox security or privacy addon that you use for similar purposes? (I am sure I have, there are just so many or them!) Fire up a comment and share your Firefox knowledge with us!
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Nice article. I use Site Advisor – – which is definitely as good, or better, than WOT (which I also use) – mainly because it checks downloads and all parts of a website in rating it. I highly recommend it.
Link:
SA? God no, no offense but that site qualifies porn sites and even widely known malware sites as “safe”, not to mention heavily biased against certain countries’ websites. Completely rubbish, just because some site had an external link to another potential harmful site, SA gives it red, but once checking a whole site FULL of malware links, it says green?
Utterly rubbish.
Yeah i’d have to recommend siteadvisor too.. I prefer it to WOT.
Great article though, it will come in handy.
Yeah, I tend to go back and forth between WOT and siteadviser, currently using WOT. Should have mentioned SiteAdvisor though. Thanks for the heads up.
SiteAdvisor
Thanks for the article!
I will pick up one or two addons
I HIGHLY recommend the Yauba Firefox Plugin. It allows you to conduct fully anonymous searches AND visit third party websites anonymously. You can get it here http://www.yauba.com/?sttname=share_yauba
Hmmm.. would have to check it out
Or maybe you could make a list of all the sites that you would not want people to know you visit, then don’t go to those sites.
I see SmartGuy is living up to his name again…. I agree with his comment though…
RequestPolicy is a must!
requestpolicy.com/
Some great addons here. I already user Foxy Proxy but all the other ones are new to me.
Thanks for the tips.
WOT SUCKS. WOT is like Wikipedia, it is run by fascist pigs who make it up as they go along!
RT
Close ‘n’ Forget – so simple but so powerful feature! It can save you a lot of headaches.
Good article. I think that IMacros can be in this row too.(why not?)
You’re missing what is probably the most important firefox extension besides NoScript. requestpolicy.com is the first comprehensive client-side protection against CSRF attacks and the first tool to enable the use of modern browsers without cross-site information leakage.
nice list…….thanks
These add-ons are very useful ,especaily lot of people now preferring Firefox over other browsers,Noscript is my favorite
Another nice add on is key scrambler, in case you are keylogged it will scramble your key strokes.
Another great Addon is RefControl. As it’s name suggests it can forge or block referrers you send as you visit a website.
Another one you forgot is the:
Secure login
Ad block plus is the best plugin ever :-)
adblockplus.org/en/
Nice extensions, specially NoScript
That panic ad on is something i plan on implementing while at work, like this week! thanks so much for the post.
I use McAfee siteAdvisor instead of WOT
Good Stuff here… I knew about a few of them and the others I am going to install now
cool, i already have ghostery and ironacly, it found 9! bugs on this site… check it urself
I have Ghostery installed already. While I was here reading your article Ghostery, mine notified me that there were 9!! web bugs/ trackers following me, and all 9 were blocked.
Good stuff. Im giving you a BIG thumbs up and a Tweet.
McAfee reveals SiteAdvisor’s retesting policy (not good):
http://is.gd/qCLY
WOT highly recommended here: Comparing “Safe Surfing” tools
http://is.gd/qD4K (includes comparative chart as proof).
The “FoxyProxy” is linked wrong – it doesnt go directly to addons site, it brings up directory of apps in MUO
The FoxyProxy link has been hacked. It has bogus characters in the link (hex dump follows):
00003500 70 6E 67 22 3E 3C 2F 70 3E 0A 3C 68 32 3E 46 6F png">.Fo
00003510 78 79 50 72 6F 78 3C 2F 68 32 3E 0A 3C 70 3E 3C xyProx.FoxyProxy -
00003570 20 46 6F 78 79 50 72 6F 78 79 20 61 75 74 6F 6D FoxyProxy autom
00003580 61 74 69 63 61 6C 6C 79 20 73 77 69 74 63 68 65 atically switche
00003590 73 20 61 6E 20 69 6E 74 65 72 6E 65 74 20 63 6F s an internet co
000035A0 6E 6E 65 63 74 69 6F 6E 20 61 63 72 6F 73 73 20 nnection across
000035B0 6F 6E 65 20 6F 72 20 6D 6F 72 65 20 70 72 6F 78 one or more prox
000035C0 79 20 73 65 72 76 65 72 73 20 62 61 73 65 64 20 y servers based
000035D0 6F 6E 20 55 52 4C 20 70 61 74 74 65 72 6E 73 20 on URL patterns
000035E0 61 6E 64 20 73 77 69 74 63 68 69 6E 67 20 72 75 and switching ru
000035F0 6C 65 73 20 64 65 66 69 6E 65 64 20 62 79 20 79 les defined by y
00003600 6F 75 2E 3C 2F 70 3E 0A 3C 70 20 73 74 79 6C 65 ou...JSvie
Nice list, however like others have said, you need to check your links – some of them lead to the wrong place.
I agree, WOT (Web of Trust) does indeed SUCK. Totally USELESS!
Thanks a lot for the list!
I have Ghostery installed already. While I was here reading your article Ghostery, mine notified me that there were 9 web bugs/ trackers following me, and all 9 were blocked. That isn’t very nice to do to people who come visit your page for security and privacy ideas.
Ghostery – It keeps an eye on the websites that are keeping an eye on you i.e. it finds out that which web sites which are tracking you and would alert you about the same.
COOL stuff , it really help.
Looks like the Ghostery link got seriously mutilated by your CMS.
Nice article. I run NoScript, BetterPrivacy, Refreshblocker and FlashBlock. This combination provides the most secure possible browsing experience you can have.
If you really want to go to sites or just have a look around the net to see what is happening, I suggest using a LiveCD like PuppyLinux. Just search the name and it will take you to the website. Once you have it up and running you can remaster the image with the above add-ons.
Happy Surfing
Phil
Most of these sites are frickin’ useless. When I clicked on a site, most of them said no longer available. Frickin’ useless!!
Just so you know, your Page Title Eraser link goes to GoldShift — add-on 2362 instead of 2363. Thought you might want to fix that. :)
http://to./695
Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus [mozilla.org] – general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite [mozilla.org] – for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript [mozilla.org] – for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner [mozilla.org] – for removing those “bounce links” that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl [mozilla.org] – for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL – prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly ‘restricted’ content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out [mozilla.org] – sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say “don’t profile me” since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can’t hurt although it probably doesn’t do anything
User Agent Switcher [mozilla.org] – Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser – this is very important
Ghostery [mozilla.org] – Informational Only – tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy [mozilla.org] – Blocks new stealth “super cookies” in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT
thats a cool list. i can recommend foxyproxy too. its a great tool.