Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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For those who want to use Firefox with added security and privacy there is Arkenfox (github.com)

submitted 3 months ago by possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I prefer Librewolf as it is easier and simpler to use

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[–] Shredder1750@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If you use user-overrides.js, it adds your custom preferences at the bottom of the user.js, as the prefs are read from top to bottom, if a new duplicate exist in your user-overrides.js but with a different value the new value would be used as it is at the bottom.

[–] MrOtherGuy@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but that is not what I'm talking about. What I mean is that when Firefox is running and you go to change some setting in say, Settings page, then the new value for that preference is stored into prefs.js (at latest on Firefox shutdown, it might remain only in-memory for some time I'm not sure). Anyway, the new value persists only for that browser session, because on next startup whatever value was set by user.js will override it.

[–] laughterlaughter@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Have you independently confirmed this?

What is preventing user.js from doing exactly what you're describing right now on your system?

[–] MrOtherGuy@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sure. For simplified example have only the following in your user.js file:

user_pref("browser.tabs.warnOnClose",true);

Start Firefox
Observe that the pref is indeed true
Go to Setting > General, observe that Confirm before closing multiple tabs is checked
Uncheck the option
In about:config observe that browser.tabs.warnOnClose is now false
Restart Firefox
Observe that the pref is again set to true

The reason is also very simple. Firefox will never write anything to user.js - thus any changes you do at runtime will only be stored to prefs.js. However, user.js always overrides prefs.js at startup.

[–] laughterlaughter@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Understood, thanks. So on a clean install, I'm assuming user.js is either empty or missing, correct?

[–] MrOtherGuy@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Yes. Firefox doesn't create user.js file itself - if you want one then you need to create it yourself either manually or with some tool. Also, I've seen some "security" software create user.js file without notifying the user about it...