IMPROVING FIREFOX PRIVACY & SECURITY ▀ ADDONS [PART I]

UPDATED ON: 2024-01-04

Addons, addons, addons!! So many of them! How to choice the right one? Whom to trust to?
I will help you with your findings and share my personal experience.

Rule of thumb: do not install too much addons, they will slow down your browser noticeably!

░ SECURITY ADDONS

• [uMatrix] ► best content blocker ever, even better than uBlock [Github archive]
  
• [Ublock Origin] ► an efficient blocker. Easy on CPU and memory. Far better than famous ADblock Plus with acceptable ads.
  
• [YouTube Sponsor Block] ► efficiently block sponsored ADS in YT videos
  
• [Popup Blocker Ultimate] ► as you know, the default Firefox pop-up blocker cannot block all pop-ups, especially the ones which are triggered upon clicking. These tricky pop-ups can be annoying and waste precious time, effort and bandwidth. Popup Blocker Ultimate designed to identify and block these pop-ups.
  
• [Spoof Time Zone] ► alters browser time zone to desired one. Could be useful to VPN users to equalize VPN and browser time zones.

░ PRIVACY ADDONS

• [LocalCDN] ► protects you against tracking through “free”, centralized, content delivery. It prevents many requests from reaching networks like google-hosted libraries, and serves local files to keep sites from breaking. Complements regular content blockers.
  
• [Canvas Blocker] ► spoofs Js APIs with fake information to prevent fingerprinting
  
• [Cookie AutoDelete] ► gets rid of a site’s cookies and LocalStorage as soon as you close its tabs. Protects against trackers and zombie-cookies. Trustworthy services can be white-listed.
  
• [I Still Don’t Care About Cookies] ► the EU regulations require that any website using cookies must get user’s permission before installing them. These warnings appear on most websites until the visitor agrees with the website’s terms and conditions. This add-on will remove these annoying cookie warnings from almost all infected websites.
  
• [Don’t Track Me google] ► removes the annoying link-conversion from google search / maps and other g products
  !INTERESTED IN PRIVACY? Check out FAQ on [how to remove telemetry bloat] from Firefox.

░ MISC STUFF

• [YT NonStop] ► eliminate annoying YT question: “Video paused. Continue watching?”
  
• [FlagFox] ► displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website’s server and provides a multitude of tools such as site safety checks, whois, translation, similar sites, validation, URL shortening, and more.
  
• [ClearURL] ► removes garbage like “utm_source” from URLs.
  
• [SingleFile] ► save an entire web page—including images and styling—as a single HTML file [useful for android version of Firefox]

░ PALEMOON ADDONS

• [nMatrix] ► advanced class/script/frame/blocker, similar to famous uMatrix.
  
• [uBlock for legacy FF] ► best adblocker ever, fork for legacy browsers.
  
• [Adblock Latitude] ► another adblocker if you don’t like excellent uBlock for some reason.
  
• [Palemoon Commander] ► is a configurator, meaning it will provide a user-friendly interface to advanced preferences that would otherwise require manual editing of parameters, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming to do.
  
• [Tab Mix Plus] ► enhances tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more.
  
• [Splashed!] ► shows splash screen during program startup.
  
• [NewScrollBars] ► adds colorful, eye-candy scroll bars.
  
• [Extended Statusbar] ► adds additional parameters to bottom status bar.
  
• [CPU & Memory Usage Status Bar] ► show cpu and memory load in status bar.
  
• [I Don’t Care About Cookies] ► dismiss annoying messages about EU cookies policy.

░ PALEMOON WARNING

I recommend to use Palemoon above version 29.1.1 with a grain of salt. For details [head over here] .

NOTE: This article is a part of comprehensive Windows 7 FAQ, which will be released in the upcoming future.