Mozilla Firefox – How to put the lockdown on surfing the web!

I’m going to give some constructive criticism here, but I thank you for sharing this guide with us.

First off, I want to say that if you follow this guide, your web browsing experience will absolutely suck. Some sites may not even function at all.

The first four suggestions don’t really matter much, and are more of a preference thing.

Disabling cookies entirely is a very very bad idea, as many MANY sites nowadays use them to maintain sessions and settings. And since you never explained how to ‘whitelist’ cookie sites, I wouldn’t recommend doing that, either. And, besides, it’s a real pain to have to manually add a site each time you think you may need it to use cookies.

Browser cache is for people who need to conserve disk space. But overall, I would recommend leaving it on the computer because it can drastically improve internet and browser performance, especially on slower internet connections.

I have no idea why you’d be paranoid about HTTP Referrer Headers. Sites use these mainly on pages where you’re prompted to login, and then you will be returned to your previous page after you log in. (An alternative method is to use get/post data through HTTP, but these methods are at the web developer’s discresion. Sites do use the referer string, though.) Some sites may not function if this is disabled.

Now, disabling the user agent string is overall the worst suggestion here. TONS of sites check which browser you’re using so that the content can be displayed in a manner which will look best with your browser. Disabling this (especially on newer, web 2.0 sites) will DEFINATELY cause some sites to render improperly and possibly not even work at all.

I highly recommend NOT applying this guide to Firefox on your home computer. On the other hand, I can see where some of these settings may be a bit more secure in a public area, such as a library or school setting. Rarely, though, have I seen either Firefox or the ability to edit settings freely on any public access computers.

This may not be the best guide, but I thank you for putting the time and effort into making this.