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Comment by maltalex | Hacker News Reader

I try to keep the number of browser extensions to a minimum since they have access to every piece of sensitive information in the browser.

So my setup is:

- uBlock Origin [0]

- Cookie AutoDelete [1]

- Firefox's "Enhanced Tracking Protection" set to "Strict" [2]

- DuckDuckGo as the default search provider

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...

[2]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...

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Additional useful pieces are Skip Redirects and Smart Referer. And enabling First Party protection in about:config, plus perhaps Facebook Container.

Against anti-adblock, Nano Defender is the thing. (There's an uBlock Origin mode in that.)

Are these options in firefox or addons? Would you mind explaining what they do and why they're useful?

I've found EasyList + "uBlock filters – Unbreak" to be sufficient in eliminating anti-adblock warnings.

I like the idea of Skip Redirects and Smart Referer, but I feel they aren't worth the risk.

They're not popular extensions (11K and 6K users respectively) and aren't being reviewed by Mozilla. I'm certainly not going to review them myself, and I see no reason to trust their developers and their personal security practices.

What is the best way to use DDG like Google with minimum friction and good search results (I rarely get relevant answers if I do a pure DDG search)?

Also, what is DDG? It has its own crawlers (DuckDuckBot) like Google and Bing have (assuming Bing has, haven't read on it)? Or DDG (or DuckDuckBot) just filters/parses results from Google et al?

It's also possible to configure Firefox to natively clear cookies on exit, minus an exception list if preferable.

- Firefox > Preferences > Privacy & Security > Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed

- Firefox > Preferences > Privacy & Security > Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed > Manage Exceptions

Definately worth considering yes. I rarely close Firefox so deleting cookies when I close a tab works better in my case.

What about setting privacy.firstparty.isolate? I've had it on for years and almost nothing breaks.

'almost'? Do you have examples of websites breaking? Does it mean for example that you wouldn't be able to log onto YouTube because Google cookies are blocked?

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