1.1 To Arkenfox or Not

🟩 FOREWORD

Arkenfox is a resource, feel free to use any, all or none of it - just HEED the warnings, notes and documentation.

🟪 TOR BROWSER

If your threat model calls for anonymity and advanced fingerprinting protection, USE TOR BROWSER. You can also use Tor Browser for everyday browsing as another secondary browser. However, you're going to want a non-Tor Browser browser too, which is Firefox, so carry on reading :).

🟪 A FEW SETTINGS & EXTENSIONS

For most people, this is all you really need.

In the Before Times, mankind suffered ... but nowadays, together with a select few extensions, you will get most of the privacy possible with Firefox's built-in solutions: such as:

• HTTPS-Only Mode
• State Partitioning
  • Network Partitioning
  • Total Cookie Protection (dFPI / Dynamic First Party Isolation)
  • Enhanced Cookie Clearing along with sanitizing¹ on close
• Site Isolation (Fission)
• CRLite
• and many more

Some of these solutions are the default, or will be. Others are easily set in Firefox's ☰ Settings. You do still need to configure some of them, but it is quick and painless - see the Privacy Guides' Firefox Desktop card.

Now you can start enjoying some of the Tor Level protections arkenfox has enjoyed since Firefox 52.

After that, the benefits get incrementally smaller, but they do add up: your mileage will vary depending on your needs. Each arkenfox release generally sees the number of prefs flipped decrease, and we've been doing this since the Before Times. We hope that arkenfox will one day become obsolete ².

¹ Sanitizing refers to clearing site and other data such as caches and histories.

² Hopefully before the Canadian Rockies wear away to a plain ^{50 – 60 million years}, assuming a rate of 60 Bubnoff units.

🟪 FINGERPRINTING

Most of the above deals with state ¹ and other cross-origin linkability mechanisms such as navigational tracking.

Stateless tracking, or fingerprinting, is a little more complex. If your threat model calls for anonymity and advanced fingerprinting protection, THEN USE TOR BROWSER. Otherwise you can read more about it later in the wiki where arkenfox helps mitigate it, but you have options.

¹ State refers to stored (disk/memory) client-side data such as those listed here.

🟪 EXPECTATIONS

If you're going to use arkenfox's user.js, then don't expect to just start using it as is. You WILL NEED TO CREATE OVERRIDES, and FULLY read this wiki.

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🟩 Next: User.js