How to configure Firefox to increase your privacy

When you use a proxy or other tools for anonymous browsing you get a certain level of protection against the detection of your IP address, but the browser stores a lot of information about the sites you visit.

Firefox has built-in feature to clear temporary files and internet history, but this might not be enough. The problem is that this info is not actually deleted from your hard disk. There are specilized tools that are able to recover this kind of info even after drive format.

Solution? Set your browser not to store any private data (history, passwords, etc.) at all. Since not data is stored you don’t need to delete it and no one will be able to ever see it.

For Firefox, the following components need reconfiguration: Privacy Settings and Saved Passwords. Let’s see how to do it.

Privacy Settings

Browsing History

In order to make the proper settings for browsing histroy go to Tools menu, then Options and Privacy tab in the open window. There, you need to uncheck all boxes that enable logging of browsing history and user entered strings. Take a look below to see how the settings should look like.

The danger of the storing browsing history is that the address of every web page you visit is recorded and stored / written on your hard drive.

Cookies

Cookies are used by websites to store little data snippets in your browser. A lot of sites (alomost all) leave such cookies in your browser. This a sign the you have visited a certain site.

Firefox has an option to remove cookies when it’s exited. There is another option as well, to not accept cookies at all, but this is not really an option as many sites need these cookies to work properly.  

In order to set up Firefox to delete your cookies when you exist you have to choose Keep until: I close Firefox option.

Private Data

Firefox can clean up any remaining traces of data. The best option is to enable it to clear data whenever you close the brower. Only problem is that if you crash or power down without proper shutdown this procedure won’t be executed, so keep that in mind.

To set up this, check the ”Always clear my private data when I close Firefox” and click on Settings.

Then,  check that all the options in the window are enabled.

Saved Passwords

You have to be extra careful with saved passwords. Imagine what could happen if someone steals your PayPal password. 

Only recently Firefox started use of encrypted saved passwords. The ramifications for the stolen saved passwords are immense. The best way to protect your passwords is not to save them in the browser.

To make sure no password is stored by Firefox, go to Security tab and uncheck Remember passwords for sites.

[Via ProxySwitcher]