The Mozilla Foundation appears to be preparing to bring Tor Project browser privacy settings to the Firefox web browser to provide better privacy protection with additional options.
For those who don't know, the Tor incognito browser uses Firefox ESR, which has been modified with additional privacy and security settings to protect users.
The Mozilla Foundation recognizes these changes, and plans to incorporate some of them into Firefox natively. In fact, the company has begun to integrate some security features into Firefox, and plans to integrate more in the future.
So far, only a few add-ons add additional privacy features to Firefox, such as the plugin for WebRTC IP leaks while using the browser.
But let's look at three Tor options that have already been added to Firefox 50. Firefox 50 is available in the Nightly development channel. However, this means that until the final version of Firefox 50, these improvements may be postponed to be added in a later version.
The first patch blocks the enumeration of plugins and mimeTypes. Websites can retrieve this information from the browser, and use it for fingerprinting. With the patch enabled, Firefox does not return any information to sites.
The second patch works in a similar way. Firefox returns 0 for screen.orientation.angle and “landscape-primary” in screen.orientation.type when websites or applications request this information.
The third and final patch removes the “Open with” option in the download dialog.
Tor's privacy settings are not enabled by default for the Firefox audience. Let's see how:
Since Firefox version 41, there is the privacy.resistFingerprinting feature, which is a central option of the Tor browser.
The instructions below are for Firefox 50 Nightly.
Type about:config in Firefox's address bar.
Confirm you will be careful not to lose your warranty :).
The privacy.resistFingerprinting preference does not exist by default.
Right-click in the main area, and select New > Boolean from the context menu.
Name the new preference privacy.resistFingerprinting.
Set its value to True to enable it.
To block the “Open with” option when downloading files:
While you are still in about:config, look for browser.download.forbid_open_with.
Double-click on it and set the value to true to enable it.
It should be noted that any security additions to the browser are welcome. The features will not be enabled by default, but will be there to provide those who wish to have more protection options.
