For your default firefox install consider Arkenfox User.js
firefox privacy, security and anti-tracking: a comprehensive user.js template for configuration and hardening
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I would advice against this. Arkenfox is great if, and only if, you understand what it's doing, what the tradeoffs are, and you are prepared to tweak the configuration on a per-site basis. This is not a good default for beginners to Linux, or people just getting started in trying to increase their digital privacy.
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There is also LibreWolf (https://librewolf.net/) and Mulvad (Mullvad VPN - Free the internet) both based on Firefox that might be more suitable for beginners. These are focusing on privacy, security and anti-tracking out of the box.
From what I've heard, Tor browser is based on firefox and it's good when it comes to privacy. I don't use it myself so I don't know how much does it differ from normal firefox but I would say that it's better than doing this for a few reasons:
- An update from firefox can add a new anti-privacy feature not included in the file, giving the false feeling that it's doing its job as intended fully, while it is not
- Even if it could change settings after every update, wouldn't that just override manually-set user preferences within the settings?
- What zenzen said
I personally don't think it's a good idea to include that kind of hacky tweaks on a beginner-friendly distro that is supposed to work ootb. If firefox starts going the chrome route and you don't feel comfortable including it on your distro, firefox-based browsers exist, and even chromium-based with good privacy exist too
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One advantage that Arkenfox.js has is that it overwrites the default configuration when Firefox launches. In that regard, Mozilla reverting some settings after an update is less of an issue because the custom configuration file gets precedence.
However, Firefox settings are poorly documented and is very difficult to keep track of which ones are being added or how to even get them to work properly. For example, new settings like Privacy-Preserving Attribution, recently added in version 128, are not always well advertised (for obvious reasons). This can lead to a situation of false security, where you assume that you're protected against everything while in reality you're leaking data elsewhere without realizing it.
You'd have to keep up with Arkenfox.js updates to remain protected, or at least informed. To their credit, they do a great job at this, but it's one more thing to keep an eye on and most people wouldn't want to have to do this.
I completely agree that we must do an effort to create more awareness about privacy issues to as many people as we can, and how to mitigate them. But the sad truth is that most people don't care about any of this, and will install Edge or Chrome the very instant something doesn't work. This is why I like to recommend Brave for most people; it's a decent balance between usability and privacy out of the box. Although I do agree that for those a little more interested should try Librewolf or Mullvad.
The Tor browser is a different story with even more caveats.
LibreWolf isn't all that great:
Thanks for sharing, this is interesting. It appeared to do quite well on the browser privacy testing website: https://privacytests.org/
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