Browser Recommendations For Desktop

Browser Recommendations For Android

Worth Mentioning for Android

• Privacy Browser - An open-source web browser focused on user privacy. Features include integrated ad blocking with EasyList, SSL certificate pinning, and Tor Orbot proxy support. Keep WebView up-to-date

Browser Recommendations For iOS

Worth Mentioning for iOS

• SnowHaze - An open-source web browser with built-in ad, tracker, cookie, and fingerprint blocking, all customizable on a per-site basis.

Browser Fingerprint - Is your browser configuration unique?

When you visit a web page, your browser voluntarily sends information about its configuration, such as available fonts, browser type, and add-ons. If this combination of information is unique, it may be possible to identify and track you without using cookies. EFF created a Tool called Panopticlick to test your browser to see how unique it is.

Test your Browser now

You need to find what most browsers are reporting, and then use those variables to bring your browser in the same population. This means having the same fonts, plugins, and extensions installed as the large installed base. You should have a spoofed user-agent string to match what the large userbase has. You need to have the same settings enabled and disabled, such as DNT and WebGL. You need your browser to look as common as everyone else. Disabling JavaScript, using Linux, or even using the Tor Browser Bundle, will make your browser stick out from the masses.

Modern web browsers have not been architected to assure personal web privacy. Rather than worrying about being fingerprinted, it seems more practical to use free software plugins to regain control. They not only respect your freedom, but your privacy also. You can get much further with these than trying to manipulate your browser's fingerprint.

Related Information

• How Unique Is Your Web Browser? Peter Eckersley, EFF.
• Our Firefox privacy add-ons section.
• BrowserLeaks.com - Web browser security testing tools that tell you what exactly personal identity data may be leaked without any permissions when you surf the Internet.

WebRTC IP Leak Test - Is your IP address leaking?

While software like NoScript prevents this, it's probably a good idea to block this protocol directly as well, just to be safe. Note: This disables browser-based call functionality that is used for webapps like Discord, Hangouts, Jitsi, etc.

Test your Browser now

How to disable WebRTC in Firefox?

In short: Set "media.peerconnection.enabled" to "false" in "about:config".

Explained:

1. Enter "about:config" in the firefox address bar and press enter.
2. Press the button "I'll be careful, I promise!"
3. Search for "media.peerconnection.enabled"
4. Double click the entry, the column "Value" should now be "false"
5. Done. Do the WebRTC leak test again.

If you want to make sure every single WebRTC-related setting is really disabled change these settings:

1. media.peerconnection.turn.disable = true
2. media.peerconnection.use_document_iceservers = false
3. media.peerconnection.video.enabled = false
4. media.peerconnection.identity.timeout = 1

Now you can be 100% sure WebRTC is disabled.

Test your Browser again

How to disable WebRTC in Safari?

Safari is far stricter with WebRTC than other major browsers, and it does not leak your IP address in its default configuration. If you'd like, you can follow these steps just to double-check your browser:

1. Choose "Preferences" under the Safari menu in your menu bar.
2. Select the Advanced tab and check the "Show Develop menu in menu bar" box.
3. Exit Preferences and open the Develop menu in your menu bar.
4. In the drop-down menu, open the "WebRTC" submenu and ensure "Enable Legacy WebRTC API" is unchecked. If it's grayed out, even better.

How to disable WebRTC in Google Chrome?

WebRTC cannot be fully disabled in Chrome; however, it is possible to change its routing settings (and prevent leaks) using an extension. Two open-source solutions include WebRTC Leak Prevent (options may need to be changed depending on the scenario), and uBlock Origin (select "Prevent WebRTC from leaking local IP addresses" in Settings).

What about other browsers?

Chrome on macOS and Internet Explorer do not implement WebRTC yet. But we recommend using Firefox on all devices.

Recommended Browser Add-ons

Worth Mentioning

• floccus - Synchronize bookmarks across browsers via Nextcloud, WebDAV or a local file (and thus any file sync solution). For Firefox, Chrome, Edge.

Additional Functionality

Persistent storage management

Desktop

Android

For Advanced Users

Firefox: Privacy Related "about:config" Tweaks

Preparation:

1. Enter "about:config" in the firefox address bar and press enter.
2. Press the button "Accept the Risk and Continue" [FF71+] or "I accept the risk".
3. Copy and paste each of the preferences below (for example "webgl.disabled") into the search bar, and set each of them to the stated value (such as "true").

Getting started:

privacy.firstparty.isolate = true

A result of the Tor Uplift effort, this preference isolates all browser identifier sources (e.g. cookies) to the first party domain, with the goal of preventing tracking across different domains. (Don't do this if you are using the Firefox Addon "Cookie AutoDelete" with Firefox v58 or below.)

privacy.resistFingerprinting = true

A result of the Tor Uplift effort, this preference makes Firefox more resistant to browser fingerprinting.

privacy.trackingprotection.fingerprinting.enabled = true

[FF67+] Blocks Fingerprinting

privacy.trackingprotection.cryptomining.enabled = true

[FF67+] Blocks CryptoMining

privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true

This is Mozilla's new built-in tracking protection. One of it's benefits is blocking tracking (i.e. Google Analytics) on privileged pages where add-ons that usually do that are disabled.

browser.send_pings = false

The attribute would be useful for letting websites track visitors' clicks.

browser.urlbar.speculativeConnect.enabled = false

Disable preloading of autocomplete URLs. Firefox preloads URLs that autocomplete when a user types into the address bar, which is a concern if URLs are suggested that the user does not want to connect to. Source

dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled = false

Disable that websites can get notifications if you copy, paste, or cut something from a web page, and it lets them know which part of the page had been selected.

media.eme.enabled = false

Disables playback of DRM-controlled HTML5 content, which, if enabled, automatically downloads the Widevine Content Decryption Module provided by Google Inc. Details

DRM-controlled content that requires the Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight NPAPI plugins will still play, if installed and enabled in Firefox.

media.gmp-widevinecdm.enabled = false

Disables the Widevine Content Decryption Module provided by Google Inc., used for the playback of DRM-controlled HTML5 content. Details

media.navigator.enabled = false

Websites can track the microphone and camera status of your device.

network.cookie.cookieBehavior = 1

Disable cookies

• 0 = Accept all cookies by default
• 1 = Only accept from the originating site (block third-party cookies)
• 2 = Block all cookies by default

network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy = 2

Only send Referer header when the full hostnames match. (Note: if you notice significant breakage, you might try 1 combined with an XOriginTrimmingPolicy tweak below.) Source

• 0 = Send Referer in all cases
• 1 = Send Referer to same eTLD sites
• 2 = Send Referer only when the full hostnames match

network.http.referer.XOriginTrimmingPolicy = 2

When sending Referer across origins, only send scheme, host, and port in the Referer header of cross-origin requests. Source

• 0 = Send full url in Referer
• 1 = Send url without query string in Referer
• 2 = Only send scheme, host, and port in Referer

webgl.disabled = true

WebGL is a potential security risk. Source

browser.sessionstore.privacy_level = 2

This preference controls when to store extra information about a session: contents of forms, scrollbar positions, cookies, and POST data. Details

• 0 = Store extra session data for any site. (Default starting with Firefox 4.)
• 1 = Store extra session data for unencrypted (non-HTTPS) sites only. (Default before Firefox 4.)
• 2 = Never store extra session data.

beacon.enabled = false

Disables sending additional analytics to web servers. Details

browser.safebrowsing.downloads.remote.enabled = false

Prevents Firefox from sending information about downloaded executable files to Google Safe Browsing to determine whether it should be blocked for safety reasons. Details

Disable Firefox prefetching pages it thinks you will visit next:

Prefetching causes cookies from the prefetched site to be loaded and other potentially unwanted behavior. Details here and here.

• network.dns.disablePrefetch = true
• network.dns.disablePrefetchFromHTTPS = true
• network.predictor.enabled = false
• network.predictor.enable-prefetch = false
• network.prefetch-next = false

network.IDN_show_punycode = true

Not rendering IDNs as their Punycode equivalent leaves you open to phishing attacks that can be very difficult to notice. Source

Looking for TRR, DoH or ESNI?

They have moved to our DNS page.

Firefox user.js Templates

• arkenfox user.js (formerly ghacks-user.js) - An ongoing comprehensive user.js template for configuring and hardening Firefox privacy, security and anti-fingerprinting.

Related Information

• Firefox Privacy: Tips and Tricks for Better Browsing - A good starting guide for users looking to keep their data private and secure.
• ffprofile.com - Helps you to create a Firefox profile with the defaults you like.
• Privacy Settings - A Firefox add-on to alter built-in privacy settings easily with a toolbar panel.
• Firefox Privacy Guide For Dummies - Guide on ways (already discussed and others) to improve your privacy and safety on Firefox.