It's nasty when large corporations sell your data. But they do it anyway. And often they provide services we want to use!
My contention is that the grand majority of internet users do not have access to the information they need to decide whether a (otherwise free) service is worth giving up their data.
But there is good news! Resources for protecting your privacy are constantly improving. The list below is a "starter kit" for people interested in preserving their data without compromising their browsing experience - at home or at work.
Most other guides will tell you "read the terms of service! Never sell your data!" I just want to make it easy for you to make your own decisions and provide some opinions along the way.
If you trust me, here is the list without comments:
- Download Firefox
- Get your Addons right (even if you don't use Firefox!)
- Install The ToS;DR addon for simplifying Terms of Service (ToS)
- Install The DuckDuckGo privacy essentials addon
- Install uBlock Origin if you want to block ads. Remove your old adblocker.
- Install The Multi-Account Containers addon (formerly called container tabs) Firefox only
- Install the Facebook container addon to spite Zuckerberg! Firefox only
- Delete old accounts and apps you no longer need.
- Get into the habit of hitting "Don't allow" at first. And if you really need something enabled, change it back in your Operating System/browser settings.
- Go through the World Privacy Forum's Top Ten Opt Outs. Privacy is a concern not just on the internet!
- Joining the National Do Not Call Registry (Step 1), opting out of Direct Marketing Association (DMA) junk mail (Step 3), and opting out of financial data sharing (Step 4) took me about 15 minutes total. The DMA charges a $2 fee, which I deemed worthwhile to receive less junk mail.
- Opting out of "prescreened" offers of credit and insurance took me a bit longer (Step 2), because I didn't want to say my SSN over the phone. See my guide. It was worth it!
You might not think twice about your ad blocker. You should. Use uBlock Origin. Here's why:
Ad-Blockers require far reaching permissions to work. For example, here is what uBlock origin needs on firefox:
- Access your data for all websites
- Read and modify privacy settings
- Access browser tabs
- Access browser activity during navigation
Hold on, access my data for all websites?!
Ad blockers have two main jobs. They block outgoing network requests to known ad sites, preventing the page from loading the ad. Then, if an ad loads but the user manually selected it as an ad, they can tell the browser not to visually render it. These two jobs require far-reaching permissions. There's no way around that.
You should choose an adblocker based on the strength of the open source community behind it. Developer community strength is a measure of how well-vetted & secure the code is.
Ghostery and PrivacyBadger have adblocking features, but they may block enough to have a noticeable effect on your browsing experience, so I won't discuss them.
To my mind, uBlock Origin is a clear winner. The developers have a justification for each permission they require, and it is up-to-date and frequently worked on. uBlock origin has about 34,900 stars on github, with a commit 5 minutes ago. Stars can measure roughly how interested developers are in a certain open source project.
AdGuard is a less popular, with about 2,100 stars and appears well maintained.
AdBlock Plus has 26 stars on gitlab, so is relatively not looked-over.
AdBlock Ultimate has about 50 stars on github and doesn't appear to have been worked on in more than a year. This is an intro Computer Science assignment masquerading as legitimate software. Delete it now.
Another consideration is speed. Low cpu usage indicates browsing is fast, while low memory usage impacts speed and the ability of your computer to run other tasks (like listening to music in the background).
| CPU | Memory |
|---|---|
 |
 |
You can read more good metrics from debugbear. Notice uBlock scores middle of the pack on loaded-page download size (graph not shown here), meaning other blockers download less. But unless you're on a dial-up modem, speed is more important.
In 2014, we all knew: Google Chrome was the fastest web browser. Maybe it was true. That is no longer the case. Google Chrome is built on an open source browser called "chromium," which is affiliated with google but developed by both google engineers and smart people around the world. But the product you download from the google site is not chromium. It is chromium plus a suit of extra "features" - some of which you can bet track your browsing. Chrome receives a D on TOS;DR for its non-transparent terms of service.
Fortunately, in 2023 alternatives are available that don't compromise browsing speed. Microsoft Edge is now based on Chromium, and performs more or less the same as Chrome, although independent testing with a large sample size across different Operating Systems and hardware is not readily available.
While Firefox lags behind in performance, it is richly featured. Firefox is completely open-source, and backed by the privacy conscious Mozilla Foundation. Their committment is important: Firefox now supports useful features that Chrome has a financial incentive never to implement so Google can track you. Enter container tabs:
Each category (for example, personal and work) gets its own set of history and cookies. You can finally achieve work/life balance! What's more, you can't be tracked in your "Personal" tabs based on your "Work" searching, and vice versa. For it's rich features, chromium independence, and the good policies of the Mozilla Foundation, Firefox is my top browser pick.
These tricks may require a bit of setup - or may affect your browsing experience. They still may be worthwhile to check out :)
- Privacy Badger Rather than block ads, privacy badger blocks tracking. If you want to support websites that advertise without giving up data, this could be your extension. Sometimes, though, this badger causes some pages to malfunction, according to my friend Jonah.
- Pi-hole Pi-hole uses a raspberry pi to route DNS requests for ads, the requests that tell webpages where to find servers, into a hole. If you don't want to install adblockers on every browser and device, this can be useful. Pi-hole will stop ads for the entire network it is on, for instance your home network. My friend Colin has set this up for his home network.
TODO:
- finish writeup of justification section