I want to make these adjustments to the browser but not sure if they cause me to be fingerprinted:
Settings
-Enable ‘Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order’
-Disable ‘Confirm before closing multiple tabs’
-Uncheck the checked search shortcuts
-Uncheck suggestions when using the address bar
-Change the save files to location
-Uncheck ‘Always ask you where to save files’
about:config controls most of Firefox settings, from network behavior, fingerprinting defense to the order of extension icons on the toolbar.
The last example is a browser interface change that has no impact on browser fingerprint: you can add or remove an extension icon or settings icon in the toolbar without impact.
Meanwhile another interface change like adding a bookmark toolbar will change your page content size (also called viewport).
In this case, it will change your browser fingerprint but it’s ok because the page content size is protected by the letterboxing.
As you can see, without deep knowledge it’s impossible to know what you’re doing in about:config, and it’s easy to shoot yourself in the foot, so the recommendation is not to change anything.
About 50% of results in my web search results are links to Reddit and I’m sick of seeing that “You’ve been blocked by network security” page with its cutesy little logo because I’m using a VPN.
How bad would it be to install an extension in Mullvad Browser to automatically redirect reddit.com links to a libreddit instance? In practice every single time I get a Reddit link I have to go manually alter the domain from reddit.com to a libreddit instance and it’s getting right on my nerves.
Is there any particular extension that would be “less fingerprintable” than others?
I know it doesn’t directly answer your question, but because of that exact reason (reddit being blocked because VPN), I tend to use more and more AI (duck.ai or whatever solutions you choose) which would include reddit results.
Just always keep an open mind that what the AI says could be wrong (kind of like reddit when you think about it).
You could also just use the Mullvad browser extension that is installed by default to proxy Reddit to use a server that isn’t blocked. At least servers in Finland and Norway have worked well. You may need to refresh the page once to get the site working though.
Are you referring to the Mullvad Browser extension for Firefox, or just using extensions for redirecting in general. I think the comment you are replying to is asking if a extension like Libredirect is ok to install on Mullvad Browser.
From my understanding, there is only one feature of Libredirect (and other redirector extensions) that could alter the browser’s fingerprint. The redirector extension may edit the DOM of the page to replace a link with the alternative frontend’s URL. In Libredirect this is off by default, but there may be other features that interact with the web pages with non-standard and fingerprintable behaviour.
Not bad at all, it’s perfectly fine to install Mullvad Browser Extension to redirect and actually it’s one of the main usecase for it.
Thanks, I am currently doing this following Critical_Crab5543’s suggestion. It is slightly annoying because I do often get a “redirect failed” error and have to refresh the page. Good to know this is fine!
I know it would be bad to install something like libredirect just to use with reddit.com, but would this be absolutely disastrous or would it be probably kind of OK?
I can’t vouch for the source code of a third party extension, but in principle I don’t see any issue about intercepting an URL and redirecting to another one.