How I Use Firefox

A long, long time ago, I firewalled my online and real-world identities.  I have separate email accounts for them.  Those email accounts live in separate Firefox profiles. To throw more chaff into the system, the profiles have different adblockers (commonly uBlock Origin; first runner-up is AdBlocker Ultimate) and may or may not include Privacy Possum.

Within the profile, I’ve separated things further into containers, full name Multi-Account Containers.  Google gets its own container, so that YouTube can’t follow me everywhere online.

For things where I suspect all the defenses are a problem, I also have a profile that runs in “always private browsing” mode, but is otherwise fairly open.  I very rarely need it.  I’d rather bounce out of a site that has too many annoyances, and which hasn’t sold me on its usefulness.  (Will I sign up for your newsletter?  Will I create an account to read this article?  No.)

(There’s also Pale Moon and the Windows XP VM with Firefox 52 ESR on it, for checking compatibility with Quilt Draw when I am working on that.  However, those are well outside of everyday usage.)

At work, I don’t use separate profiles; I ended up with entirely separate browsers instead.  My day-to-day work happens in Firefox, with containers for the AWS console, each of our own sites I am responsible for, and “other things requiring login.”  The theory is that a site outside the container(s) that tries to attack one inside will fail, because the login isn’t valid from outside the container.  Meanwhile, the multiple containers separate our sites and our general service providers, and the cloud against everyone.

Because the Google Panopticon Browser is becoming the new IE6, there’s a copy of Edge to make the corporate site(s) “fully supported.”  Let Microsoft spy upon themselves, and only themselves.  All so-called “AI” “features” are turned off, where possible.

Finally, for browsing work-adjacent things that aren’t actually work, like LWN and various blogs, I have Waterfox.  It doesn’t have containers or profiles, but it does have uMatrix (better security by running less remote code), along with LeechBlock so that I don’t waste the whole day in there.

uMatrix is a great defense system; in fact, too great. I wouldn’t recommend it for most people.  However, it suits my goals for that particular browser.