GoKawiilThe web is a dangerous place. While modern browser security architecture protects against many threats, security vulnerabilities are found and fixed every day. Through security exploits, malicious websites can read user data and execute arbitrary code on the user’s machine.
But there are more mundane threats. Ads and trackers invade our privacy, track us across sites and send our browsing history to tech oligarchs. On many sites, cookie notices, popups, “AI chatbots” and “accessibility overlays” get in the way of reading the actual content. Megabytes of third-party content slow down the loading performance. The execution of third-party scripts keeps the processor busy and drains the battery.
Threat modeling
There are many approaches to safe and private browsing depending on the threats and attacks you need to protect yourself against.
One extreme is an unmodified Chrome or Edge browser. It shows all ads, loads all trackers, allows cross-site cookies, incorporates GenAI chatbots, downloads gigabytes of GenAI models without consent. Such a browser provides no protection against privacy threats and annoyances. Au contraire, Google and Microsoft take part in the advertising and surveillance industrial complex and actively exploit Chrome and Edge users.
The other extreme would be a constrained browser like Tor on a constrained operating system like Tails. This is recommended for people who are targeted by state-sponsored hackers or who have censored internet access.
The level of privacy and security depends on your requirements and tasks. In this post, I describe the setup on my work laptop. The main goal is to browse the web quickly, efficiently and safely without ads, trackers and tracking cookies. Note that the company I work for uses Google Workspace, so some protections are tailored to meet this requirement.
Main browser: A restricted Firefox
My main browser is a restricted Firefox that blocks questionable content and risky technologies on all sites except for a few known sites.
Enhanced Tracking Protection is enabled. In addition, I use the essential browser extension uBlock Origin with numerous filter lists activated.
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