recommended browsing experience

here’s what you need to do to have a better experience online. I had an idea to write a whole bunch of justifications but the truth is, I’m a huge nerd, I’ve been online since before online was a thing and I know how to browse safely and efficiently. follow this advice for a more pleasant experience online.

1. install firefox. no really, it’s great and should be used more. It’s very important that multiple standards exist and so at the very least, try to use something that’s not based on the blink engine. I personally love the Gecko engine and been using it since it was called Phoenix. If you don’t use firefox, at least pick something that isn’t chrome or edge, stay away from defaults people, this is good advice in nearly any situation.
2. Install uBlock Origin. It’s open-source, supports Chrome, Chromium, MS Edge, Opera, and Safari up to version 13. but why use it anywhere but Firefox? update- yeah, just use Firefox.
3. for tracking protection, install privacy badger. I trust the EFF, they have done good work for decades on internet civil liberties and I like their extension. I use this primarily for blocking ads and cookies that fail to respect the do not track setting in a user’s web browser.
4. then install a script blocker, yesscript2. this is just a great tool, I don’t have it on by default but it’s very useful for blocking popups and annoying scripts that slow or block your ability to view the content.
5. At this point you should have a much faster and more pleasant internet browsing experience. some additional plugins that I run but are not strictly necessary.
   • bitwarden. passwords suck, so does identity theft (ask me how I know). IMHO this is the best one on the market but in truth nearly any respectable password manager is a good idea. I do not reuse or even know any of my passwords. I use 31 character random passwords unless I have to dumb it down, and I MFA everything I can.
   • facebook container. this might get a promotion because IMHO this should be mandatory. it just keeps watch for any facebook site and loads it into an isolated container to avoid 3rd party tracking. even if you are like me and dumped your facebook account years ago, they still are one of the biggest trackers on the tubes and likely know more about you than you do.
   • firefox account. this is not a plugin but I do appreciate that I can setup a firefox account which keeps my browser profile saved and available on all my machines. this is purely convenience and so is not mandatory (and is somewhat against the spirit of this advice).

lastly, this deserves it’s own page or at least a full writeup but I also have a pihole DNS adblocker on my network. I’ve run it in a few iterations, on a pi, in a docker container, in a VM, but it’s well worth it. mine is currently installed on a raspberry pi but once the basement is fixed, I’ll be moving it back to a docker container for reliability.

I hope this helps, it’s sure been good for me. I have quite literally been online as long as the world wide web has existed and not only has this kept me largely free of ads, it’s also kept me safe; the only virus’ and malware I’ve ever had to cleanup has been at work.