Enable Tracking Protection in FireFox (WaterFox too!)

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:04 pm

Steve Gibson mentioned this on Security Now this week. It will be available as a toggle in the normal privacy settings window in Firefox 39, but it can be enabled right now by going into the about:config settings page.

It uses a curated blacklist managed by Mozilla foundation, to block sites that specifically aggregate tacking data on you. As a nice by-product it also speeds most web sites up 20% since your browser doesn't have to waste time pinging all those 3rd party tracking sites.

After you enable it it, go to http://www.nytimes.com/ and you should see a shield icon in the URL bar that indicates that Firefox is blocking tracking sites on that page, and you can click on the shield for more info or to disable blocking on a per-site basis if necessary.

This does NOT block ads, so for that you still need Adblock or something else. All it does is block tracking aggregators. Basically this is Mozilla's response to the utter failure of the industry to respect the "DO NOT TRACK" header.

Works in latest WaterFox also.

I see no down-side to doing this.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tr ... =inproduct

psypher · Post by **psypher** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:31 pm

I tried it, but I don't see the shield in the location bar.

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 4:12 pm

doesn't do anything for me in WF 35 but I have other add ons that might be doing it already. I have one that is called disconnect .

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 4:16 pm

I think you need to be on the latest version of FF or WF.

This is what it looks like in my WaterFox when I click on the shield:

Losbot · Post by **Losbot** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 4:24 pm

You might not have the latest version. I see it in WaterFox.
Thanks Bob!

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 4:31 pm

ok, got it now,, thanks.

Err · Post by **Err** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 5:57 pm

Awesome. Thanks FP.

Nuby1Canuby · Post by **Nuby1Canuby** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 6:07 pm

I see it now. I missed a few steps the first time:

How to turn on Tracking Protection

In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter.
- The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I'll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.
Search for privacy.trackingprotection.enabled.
Double-click privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to toggle its value to true.

This will turn on Tracking Protection. If you later want to turn it back off, repeat the above steps to toggle the preference back to false.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 6:31 pm

Hum...I don't see it.

privacy.trackingprotection.enabled;true
services.sync.prefs.sync.privacy.trackingprotection.enabled;true

Those were the 2 items that came up with the search. I even shut down FF and re-started and still no icon. I'm using the standard FF 36.0.4.

Err · Post by **Err** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 8:00 pm

Executioner wrote:Hum...I don't see it.

privacy.trackingprotection.enabled;true
services.sync.prefs.sync.privacy.trackingprotection.enabled;true

Those were the 2 items that came up with the search. I even shut down FF and re-started and still no icon. I'm using the standard FF 36.0.4.

Are you running a script blocker? I had to temporarily allow the nytimes site in order to see the shield.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 8:07 pm

Err wrote:Are you running a script blocker? I had to temporarily allow the nytimes site in order to see the shield.

Nope.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 8:15 pm

OK - got it to work after disabling this add-on:

https://bitbucket.org/adstomper/adblockedge

The above was for my laptop. On my desktop, I had to disable this one:
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock