Firefox has recently become my go-to browser of choice, not becuase of speed, but because of privacy – more to come on this subject at a later time.
Having established a configuration I am happy with – following guides on sites such as privacytools.io – I like to be sure no add-ons or Firefox updates can reset the configuration, so I opt for locked preferences. More information from Mozilla on this here.
To lock preferences on Debian, you’ll need to create two files as outlined in the Mozilla article – mozilla.cfg and local-settings.js.
mozilla.cfg
// lockPref("privacy.trackingprotection.enabled", true); lockPref("geo.enabled", false); lockPref("browser.safebrowsing.enabled", false); lockPref("browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled", false); lockPref("browser.safebrowsing.downloads.enabled", false); lockPref("dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled", false); lockPref("network.cookie.cookieBehavior", 1); lockPref("network.cookie.lifetimePolicy", 2); lockPref("browser.cache.offline.enable", false); lockPref("browser.send_pings", false); lockPref("webgl.disabled",true); lockPref("dom.battery.enabled", false); lockPref("browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo", 0); lockPref("media.peerconnection.enabled", false); lockPref("media.peerconnection.turn.disable", true); lockPref("media.peerconnection.use_document_iceservers", false); lockPref("media.peerconnection.video.enabled", false); lockPref("media.peerconnection.identity.timeout", 1); lockPref("browser.search.suggest.enabled", false); lockPref("datareporting.healthreport.service.enabled", false); lockPref("datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled", false); lockPref("signon.rememberSignons", false);
local-settings.js
pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0); pref("general.config.filename", "mozilla.cfg");
Now copy these files to the required directories, close and open Firefox.
cp mozilla.cfg /usr/lib/firefox-esr/ cp local-settings.js /usr/lib/firefox-esr/defaults/pref/