[Infowarrior] - Seven Firefox Plug-ins That Improve Online Privacy

Mon Mar 15 16:36:00 UTC 2010

Seven Firefox Plug-ins That Improve Online Privacy
Worried about preserving your privacy in an online world where privacy  
is disappearing? Here are seven Firefox add-ons that will help.

http://www.csoonline.com/article/print/574763

Joseph Guarino, CISSP, LPIC, CSO
March 12, 2010

As strange as it might sound, there are times when I wish for the old  
days of the Internet circa the early 1990's. The days of Mosaic and  
Lynx, where there was no Flash, no Javascript and no Java. A simpler  
time where protecting your privacy and security wasn't as essential as  
it is today.

Time travel isn't an option for securing my browser. But Firefox gives  
me it all and then some. The number-two browser (with 32 percent  
market share), Firefox is a cross platform, standards based, open  
source browser. It is feature rich and has supernumerary add-ons to  
extend its functionality. In the spirit of Open Source, its community  
maintains a focus on security and has a strong record of swiftly  
patching known vulnerabilities, faster in some cases than most others  
in the market.

Firefox isn't just a killer app; it's also a pillar of the Internet  
community. When it comes to security and privacy, the Firefox picture  
is compelling, with over 600 plug-ins related to privacy and security.  
Acknowledging the current state of privacy and security, these plug- 
ins are a welcome addition to any browsing experience.

My goal in this article is to highlight a few of my favorites with the  
hopes that you too will take advantage of them.

NoScript
NoScript is a powerful add-on that blocks and blacklists Javascript,  
Java, Flash, and other plug-ins by default. It features protections  
against Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Flash XSS and clickjacking, to  
name a few. With most websites relying on these plug-in technologies,  
you effectively have to whitelist the sites for them to function.  
Using the NoScript status bar icon, you can whitelist on a temporary  
basis or add sites to your permanent whitelist. This preemptive script  
blocking tool is a must for any Firefox user.

BetterPrivacy
BetterPrivacy is an add-on that lets you manage LSO-cookies -- or, as  
they are commonly known, flash cookies. Flash cookies are a newer and  
more enhanced way of storing information about you and your online  
activities than traditional cookies. Unlike the traditional Web  
cookie, flash cookies don't expire and can't be deleted within the  
browser's interface. Even "delete your recent history" doesn't remove  
these "super cookies." Adobe currently only provides an online-only  
website storage panel to manage them, which is hardly user-or-privacy  
friendly. Thankfully, BetterPrivacy helps us chomp on those pesky  
cookies, allowing us to manage and remove them.

Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus is a simple add-on that gives granular control over page  
elements such as ads/banners content in your browser experience.  
Although it does use a region-specific block list, you can configure  
filters with great flexibility, blocking or allowing content as you  
see fit. Adblock is a God-send for those of us who don't want a Web  
littered with poorly targeted ads.

Foxproxy
Foxproxy is a feature-rich proxy management add-on. It allows ease and  
customization in managing your proxy setting. For example, you can add  
multiple proxies and to define how and when they are used based on URL  
patterns, wildcards, expressions, etc. Added support for Tor provides  
some privacy and anonymity. Foxproxy even supports Tor in conjunction  
with Privoxy, the non-caching Web privacy enhancing proxy offering  
even greater potential for online privacy and anonymity.

Firebug
Although Firebug is technically a Web-development tool, it certainly  
holds its weight in helping protect our privacy/security. This tool  
allows us to monitor, debug and edit the content of any website live  
in any webpage within the browser. We can see all the details on the  
regarding HTML, CSS, Javascript and related webpage resources in great  
detail. It does help the more nerdy among us ascertain what's going on  
under the hood of a website with nicely detailed, color-coded and  
organized displays. It's helpful in investigating websites that seem  
slightly fishy.

Torbutton
Torbutton is A simple add-on that allows you to configure Firefox to  
use Tor. For those unfamiliar with Tor, it is a distributed, community  
run network that provides relative anonymity/privacy to those  
utilizing it. Torbutton allows for a Firefox user to easily and  
quickly turn on Tor for some basic anonymity in their Internet  
activities.

FireGPG
FireGPG is an add-on that allows integration with the cross-platform,  
free software encryption suite GnuPG. (GNU Privacy Guard). GnuPG is an  
OpenPGP standards-based free software encryption tool that allows you  
to encrypt and sign your communications. FireGPG allows you to  
encrypt, decrypt, sign, etc. directly within Firefox. FireGPG also  
supports direct integration with Gmail, with more webmail applications  
planned the near future.

Firefox is a great choice for those interested in a feature-rich,  
stable and secure browser. With the addition of these add-ons it  
proves to be a powerful tool for protecting your security and privacy.  
If you're not already a user I encourage you to give it a try. The  
dedicated nature of the Firefox community promises more innovations to  
look forward to in the future.