Did you ever know that several websites would collect all the data from your browser? if no, then better keep in mind that sometimes it is necessary to maintain your privacy, because the lesser the privacy, the more are the chances of your data being compromised. One cannot be sure how severe the data compromise can be, but there is really no need to be tracked online when you know there are ways of keeping yourself private while browsing the web.
The Mozilla Firefox browser takes your personal data and shares that with Google and Mozilla so that the experience of browsing is made better, and there are search suggestions made, and the browser would even block any malicious web pages. Except for the last one, everything else is of no use for you, and you can choose not to share the data. here’s how.
As this is mostly about playing around with the settings in the browser, here is how you can go to options. Go to Menu > Click on Options (or place the cursor over Options to open a sub menu, and click Options in that). This would be the same for all the different steps given below.
Enhancing Privacy in Firefox Browser – Different Methods
Tracking
Firefox, just like the other browsers (Chrome, Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer) sends your data to the websites that request it.
Go to Options > Privacy tab. The option of tracking is enabled by default, so you will have to select the option “Tell sites that I do not want to be tracked”, so that the data is kept private and the websites won’t receive any information from the browser.
Enable Blocking of Sites / Web forgeries
There are security risks and vulnerabilities always seen with the browsers. But Firefox has got the Malware detection technology, the same one seen in Google Chrome. Go to Security tab under Options, and you would see the two options:
- Block reported attack sites
- Block reported web forgeries
Unchecking these would be risky and Firefox won’t be able to block any such pages, and your data can be compromised. These two enabled would keep the browser downloading a new list of malicious websites every 30 minutes, and thus the data in the browser is safe.
These are the two warnings that you would see when the malicious or forgery pages are browsed in Firefox.
Disable Search Suggestions
Every character you type in the search box in Firefox would send the information to the search engine for the suggestions, and you can choose not to share that and for that, you need to disable the suggestion. Just right click in the search box and disable the “Show Suggestions” option.
Clear Cookies when Firefox closes
Go to Options > Privacy tab and click on the “Firefox will” section to open the dropdown list, and select “Use custom settings for history”.
Cookies are something that the websites store, and there are websites which can function badly if you totally disable the cookies, “Clear history when Firefox closes” and click on “Settings” beside that option. It would open the Settings for Clearing History, where you need to select only “Cookies” and click on OK to save the setting.
Telemetry for sharing browser performance
The Telemetry option shares the performance, usage, hardware and customization data about the browser with Mozilla, but that wouldn’t need your prompt any time and things would be running in the background. Uncheck the option so that no performance or browser / hardware data is sent to Mozilla.
Browse Privately (Incognito)
The private browsing is one of the easy ways to maintain total privacy, and the things that Firefox doesn’t store in the Private Browsing mode include Visited pages, Form and Search Bar entries, Passwords, Download List entries, Cookies, Cached Web Content, Offline Web Content, User data. Wasn’t all this you were looking to keep private? the only disadvantage here is that you won’t be able to save things and use them in future yourself.
How secure / private is Firefox Sync?
The Firefox Sync feature is pretty secure and you don’t need to worry about the privacy with it because the browser itself encrypts all the data that is being saved and sent to the servers for syncing.
Every browser add-on has it’s own set of rules and privacy settings, thus you need to make sure you are using the ones which don’t expose all of your data available for others advantage. In the end, it is your privacy which is more important than the functionality and uses of those add-ons which are risky.
Using an Add-on for Privacy
Having said about the add-ons, there is a useful one which helps in maintaining the privacy of the user’s personal data in the Firefox browser. It’s the “DoNotTrackMe: Online Privacy Protection” firefox add-on which does a good job in stopping companies and advertisers from tracking your web browsing and sending you spam email.
