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Browsers are used FAR FAR more than PDF. Browsers user FAR FAR more likely to have already experienced these exploits and had them fixed.

It isn't that Adobe isn't as good as it so much as that Adobe is just a new player in the JavaScript world.

And for reference, Firefox and Adobe are sharing some implementation details.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/

How the script interacts with the rest of the software is a problem. The exploits (without actually looking at these specific details) are generally not with the JS engine, but are with the integration between the engine and the application. What generally happens is that someone connects JS to some component of the C code that does things that shouldn't be allowed in a document, but the guy who wired up the connection between JS and the C code doesn't know about the danger or doesn't realize that it allows someone to create a chain of objects that can do something nasty and otherwise normally not allowed.

Security in complex systems such as a browser or pdf viewer is insanely complex. Not only do you have to protect against the user doing potentially bad things, you also have to make sure that the document the user is opening doesn't do something the user doesn't expect, while still allowing all the other stuff the user wants to do to work.

While the code name is electrolysis, it is called Content Processes. According to this https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes#Phase_II:_Parallel_Improvements , the project is still lagged behind on completing Phase 2, projected to be completed November 1st, 2009. The real multiprocess work isn't even going to hit until Phase 4, which is going to be months from now. I'm really not sure what the author of that blog tested, since the only multiprocess aspects of the electrolysis build are disabled by default, requiring dom.ipc.plugins.enabled to be set to true in about:config. It is not necessary to compile the build yourself either, as the latest electrolysis nightly build can be found here: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-electrolysis/ precompiled for your enjoyment, not that it matters.. since it's so early in the development process that there is no benefit whatsoever outside of helping them track bugs.

While the code name is electrolysis, it is called Content Processes. According to this https://wiki.mozilla.org/Content_Processes#Phase_II:_Parallel_Improvements , the project is still lagged behind on completing Phase 2, projected to be completed November 1st, 2009. The real multiprocess work isn't even going to hit until Phase 4, which is going to be months from now. I'm really not sure what the author of that blog tested, since the only multiprocess aspects of the electrolysis build are disabled by default, requiring dom.ipc.plugins.enabled to be set to true in about:config. It is not necessary to compile the build yourself either, as the latest electrolysis nightly build can be found here: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-electrolysis/ precompiled for your enjoyment, not that it matters.. since it's so early in the development process that there is no benefit whatsoever outside of helping them track bugs.

Fennec is Firefox's version of a mobile browser, with finger/pointer panning.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Well, you could start here:

http://hg.mozilla.org/tamarin-central

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/

Well, you could start here:

http://hg.mozilla.org/tamarin-central

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/

Very funny.

You know, a plugin for that would probably be popular, but, wow, would it spoil the fun.

This is the closest I found. And look -- it's a link that points to mozilla.org. I couldn't have spoofed that. Go ahead. Click on it. Really. You can trust me. It's even https:

Although I will admit that I haven't tried the plugin yet myself. There's something about it that makes me worry it might replace ALL links with rickrolls, or something more subtly devious (e.g., do that only on April 1st, or only after midnight and before 6am). I'll need to look at the code first.

Or better yet, Flashblock.

Why only stop Youtube videos? They're one of the few flash objects you might actually want to load (I keep youtube on my Flashblock whitelist). Plus, Flash-borne viruses are typically delivered as ads, which Tubestop won't block from loading.

Tubestop is your friend (tm).

Well not entirely perfect, but I have yet to find a better editor for editing code.

I have yet to find a code editor I really like. For text other than code, Emacs is clearly it, but for code (1) I miss IDE-like code completion, code navigation ("go to definition"), etc. features in emacs, and (2) I miss emacs-like editing in IDEs. (The substitutes for the first seem to be a poor substitute (e.g. tags files) or work very poorly or not at all (e.g. the semantic mode in cedet).)

Better integration with GUI applications. I want to use Emacs for my editor boxes in Firefox, notably.

It's not prefect integration, but check out the FF extension It's All Text!. It'll add an "edit" button to the bottom right of textareas that will open your external editor of choice.

the best part is that each tab gets its own thread. IE8 and Chrome are the only browsers that do this (to my knowledge) and it's really handy - broken websites don't hork up your entire browsing session like they do in Firefox and Opera.

Process, not thread. And Firefox is working on this and should have it done in the next year or two, with any luck (I don't see a timetable).

Am I alone thinking that if this company wins their suit maybe Microsoft would actually rename their search engine to something not as cringeworthy?

You're both alone and wrong. It's just a buggy, ad-ridden front end for the WolframAlpha search engine and serves as a distraction from what Microsoft Activist Icahn and his attack dogs started doing to Yahoo.

After re-branding Live Search as "Bing", to leave the baggage associated with the old name, they also struck a deal so that Bing is a front-end for Wolfram Alpha plus whatever Live Search might have had. So to get those results unmodified, you don't have to go through M$ filter, you can go straight to WolframAlpha skipping the middle man. Not at all difficult.

There are even meta-search engines that can cross-search both Google and Wolfram Alpha for you. For Firefox there is the Goofram add-on which lets you search both at the same time. If you're on Opera, Safari or Chromium, there are also search customization options there, too

Why use Emacs when you can use VIM in Firefox?

Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as promised by the sacred words , and spoke of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught but a follower.

from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9
(10th Edition)

Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as promised by the sacred words , and spoke of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught but a follower.

from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9
(10th Edition)

I'm still not convinced. There is still a lot that needs to be implemented, such as context-sensitive menus. I have not been able to find a way to save a link or an image, and it's only by trial and error that I was able to open a link in a new tab (open the keyboard, hold ctrl, wait for message about new tab, open tab bar, click on new tab).

The mock-ups I found here look good, but they are a long way from actually being implemented.

I clicked the "get add-ons" on the welcome screen and it only gave two options (URL fixer and some location add-on).

Those are add-ons recommended by Mozilla. This page implies that there are 726 total add-ons for Mobile, with AdBlock Plus here.

I clicked the "get add-ons" on the welcome screen and it only gave two options (URL fixer and some location add-on).

Those are add-ons recommended by Mozilla. This page implies that there are 726 total add-ons for Mobile, with AdBlock Plus here.

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Even on Slashdot, I would guess the vast majority of visitors are running stock browser configs and never wade into these "below your threshold" discussion about how terrible ads are.

Adblock plus, one adblocker on one web browser, is used daily by about 11 million people. Doesn't negate your point but it's not in the noise either.

---

The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".

Great question. Got me to thinking there must be an Eclipse or Firefox plugin for that. Found a few I'll have to check out now. MyLyn looks promising from IBM http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-mylyn1/ though it seems to more programming oriented than what you do.

For FireFox, maybe Quick ToDo list https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11386 or Time Tracker https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1887

Set up a quick Drupal http://www.drupal.org/ site with pages you can privately blog to as an online notebook. Use Time Tracker in Firefox to track time on each task page.

I dunno - just made all this up.

Great question. Got me to thinking there must be an Eclipse or Firefox plugin for that. Found a few I'll have to check out now. MyLyn looks promising from IBM http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-mylyn1/ though it seems to more programming oriented than what you do.

For FireFox, maybe Quick ToDo list https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11386 or Time Tracker https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1887

Set up a quick Drupal http://www.drupal.org/ site with pages you can privately blog to as an online notebook. Use Time Tracker in Firefox to track time on each task page.

I dunno - just made all this up.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419

For Firefox, there's Long URL Please. Works great.

These days I just avoid all of these links.

Oh, you almost made me believe that there is no Firefox extension to handle this problem. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13140

First it's gotta download that 7 Meg file, then Adobe's gotta kick start, and then it doesn't let me highlight anything to keep me from copying and pasting.

how to not use reader inside a browser

And re:slow & bloated; just go to the plugin directory and delete anything you have no need for (ie. most of it). Voilà, fast-booting, non-bloated adobe reader.

imnsho, anything xpdf-based is way slower than acrobat in page-rendering, and generally not clever enough to search ligatured words.

I use this instead: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7518

As a Firefox plugin it allows you to submit Google searches while logged into Google services but not affiliate the search with your Google account.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10354nn.com/

flash cookies. I can safely bet 99% of you never remember to clear them

Cue BetterPrivacy addon for Firefox. Works for me.

No RequestPolicy?

• CookieSafe
• BetterPrivacy
• TrackMeNot

Then configure CookieSafe to "Deny Cookies Globally" (you can easily make exceptions for some sites). BetterPrivacy and TrackMeNot come with suitable defaults.

With this set-up, no cookies will be created. DOM Storage (super-cookies) and flash cookies will be wiped whenever you close your browser. And you will gently spam Google and other search engines with random searches, just in case they do tracking by IP addresses.

You may also want to throw in:

• FlashBlock and AdBlockPlus, to make the web more... uh... readable.
• NoScript, if you're paranoid.

• CookieSafe
• BetterPrivacy
• TrackMeNot

Then configure CookieSafe to "Deny Cookies Globally" (you can easily make exceptions for some sites). BetterPrivacy and TrackMeNot come with suitable defaults.

With this set-up, no cookies will be created. DOM Storage (super-cookies) and flash cookies will be wiped whenever you close your browser. And you will gently spam Google and other search engines with random searches, just in case they do tracking by IP addresses.

You may also want to throw in:

• FlashBlock and AdBlockPlus, to make the web more... uh... readable.
• NoScript, if you're paranoid.

• CookieSafe
• BetterPrivacy
• TrackMeNot

Then configure CookieSafe to "Deny Cookies Globally" (you can easily make exceptions for some sites). BetterPrivacy and TrackMeNot come with suitable defaults.

With this set-up, no cookies will be created. DOM Storage (super-cookies) and flash cookies will be wiped whenever you close your browser. And you will gently spam Google and other search engines with random searches, just in case they do tracking by IP addresses.

You may also want to throw in:

• FlashBlock and AdBlockPlus, to make the web more... uh... readable.
• NoScript, if you're paranoid.

Search engine plug-in for Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12506

I recently started whitelisting cookies, and I am currently trying out the Cookie Monster addon for Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4703

The biggest addition to what you suggest is that there is a 'temporarily allow cookies' interface, which makes it pretty easy to ban all cookies and selectively enable cookies for a domain for only the current browser session when something doesn't work.

1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.

If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).

I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.

Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything
User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important
Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT

Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa

All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use

1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.

If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).

I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.

Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything
User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important
Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT

Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa

All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use

1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.

If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).

I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.

Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything
User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important
Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT

Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa

All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use

1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.

If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).

I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.

Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything
User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important
Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT

Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa

All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use

1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.

If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).

I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.

Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything
User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important
Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT

Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa

All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use

1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.

If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).

I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.

Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything
User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important
Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT

Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa

All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use

1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.

If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).

I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.

Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything
User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important
Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT

Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa

All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use

1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.

If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).

I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.

Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything
User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important
Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT

Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa

All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use

1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.

If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).

I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.

Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything
User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important
Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT

Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa

All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use

1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.

If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).

I create a specific profile for each major web app - I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.

Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus - general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite - for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript - for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner - for removing those "bounce links" that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl - for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL - prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly 'restricted' content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out - sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say "don't profile me" since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can't hurt although it probably doesn't do anything
User Agent Switcher - Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser - this is very important
Ghostery - Informational Only - tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy - Blocks new stealth "super cookies" in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT

Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for - and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy - note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under "Documents & Settings" on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies - until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile - this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don't accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa

All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy configurations to use

Here are some addons I use in Firefox that might be of use for some: CookieSafe, permanently ban google in specific from setting cookies (for example): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2497 Ghostery, See who's tracking your web browsing and block them automaticly. (trackers like google analytics, quantcast, etc) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609 Torbutton,Provides a button to securely and easily enable or disable the browser's use of Tor. It is currently the only addon that will safely manage your Tor browsing to prevent IP address leakage, cookie leakage, and general privacy attacks. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2275

Here are some addons I use in Firefox that might be of use for some: CookieSafe, permanently ban google in specific from setting cookies (for example): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2497 Ghostery, See who's tracking your web browsing and block them automaticly. (trackers like google analytics, quantcast, etc) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609 Torbutton,Provides a button to securely and easily enable or disable the browser's use of Tor. It is currently the only addon that will safely manage your Tor browsing to prevent IP address leakage, cookie leakage, and general privacy attacks. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2275

Here are some addons I use in Firefox that might be of use for some: CookieSafe, permanently ban google in specific from setting cookies (for example): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2497 Ghostery, See who's tracking your web browsing and block them automaticly. (trackers like google analytics, quantcast, etc) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9609 Torbutton,Provides a button to securely and easily enable or disable the browser's use of Tor. It is currently the only addon that will safely manage your Tor browsing to prevent IP address leakage, cookie leakage, and general privacy attacks. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2275