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Some Tor Privacy Settings Coming to Firefox

posted by janrinok on Wednesday July 06 2016, @03:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the every-little-bit-helps dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

While the Tor browser is based on Firefox ESR, it is modified with additional privacy and security settings to protect users of the browser while using the program. Considering that Tor browser is used by some in critical situations, whistleblowing, publishing news or communication, it is only natural that a stronger focus on privacy and security is necessary.

Mozilla acknowledges these modifications, and plans to integrate some of them in Firefox natively. In fact, the company has already begun to integrate some in Firefox, and plans to integrate others in the future.

Tor-specific privacy settings are often not suitable for Firefox's mainstream audience. That's why you need to enable these settings manually in Firefox before they become available.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 06 2016, @03:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 06 2016, @03:50PM (#370713)

    Why???

    Are they just assuming that all non-firefox programs are unable to securely load a file? That'd be rich, considering firefox's own issues.

    This sounds more like something for a public kiosk, not that anybody should expect such a thing to be secure via the browser. There are numerous ways to escape when the user at the keyboard is trying to do so on purpose.

    It's more loss of functionality, as we've come to expect from firefox.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday July 06 2016, @06:06PM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 06 2016, @06:06PM (#370817) Journal

    I assume that you have maintained the accepted practice of not reading TFA....?

    The first patch blocks enumeration of plugins and mimeTypes. Sites may retrieve the information from the browser, and use it in fingerprinting. With the patch in place, Firefox returns no information to the site blocking the requests effectively.

    The second patch works in a similar manner. Firefox returns 0 for screen.orientation.angle and "landscape-primary" for screen.orientation.type when sites or applications request the information.

    The third and final patch removes the "open with" option in the download dialog.

    The settings do not remove any functionality but give you the option of ensuring that your browser does not respond to a few queries that might permit it to be differentiated from others using the same browser. This is claimed to be to prevent some types of browser fingerprinting. How useful this will actually be - they will have your IP if you are not actually using TOR - remains to be seen. And they can hardly be accused (in this particular instance) of removing functionality - if you don't select the options then Firefox will respond to queries just as it does today.

    And, as you point out, you can still choose to use any other browser should you wish to do so.

    --
    I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.

  • (Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Wednesday July 06 2016, @09:24PM

    by SubiculumHammer (5191) on Wednesday July 06 2016, @09:24PM (#370967)

    Troll. Always with the Firefox bashing. Never happy.