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Firefox Tracking Protection and extension overlap?

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  • Last reply by joopberis

joopberis
joopberis
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There is no shortage of privacy protection plugins, which I consider to be a good thing However, Firefox also has tracking protection on board itself. This leaves me wondering if and how much overlap there is between these privacy protection plugins and Firefox tracking protection and if having both or multiple of these enabled, isn't simply overkill?

To illustrate, I have tracking protection set to strict. In addition, I use EFF Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, NoScript and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials.

If I have Firefox tracking protection set to strict, do I still need Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials? These seem to cover the same functionality but one may be better than the other. How do I know which to choose? (NoScript is more a security feature, so that's another matter).

There is no shortage of privacy protection plugins, which I consider to be a good thing However, Firefox also has tracking protection on board itself. This leaves me wondering if and how much overlap there is between these privacy protection plugins and Firefox tracking protection and if having both or multiple of these enabled, isn't simply overkill? To illustrate, I have tracking protection set to strict. In addition, I use EFF Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, NoScript and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. If I have Firefox tracking protection set to strict, do I still need Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials? These seem to cover the same functionality but one may be better than the other. How do I know which to choose? (NoScript is more a security feature, so that's another matter).

All Replies (2)

cor-el
cor-el
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There is usually no need to enable ETP in Firefox if you already use content blocking extensions. Extensions do their job before ETP, so ETP normally isn't doing anything (shield is always gray). The problem comes that you block too much and thus needs to disable the extension for a website. When you disable this block in an extension then ETP in Firefox will start to detect and likely will block content (purple shield instead of gray shield), so you need to disable ETP for this website as well. Content blocking extensions usually come with extra features and filters and can detect more than Firefox ETP. It is up to you to decide if you want to use extensions and be prepared for extra effort in case essential content is blocked and you need to disable one or more extensions.

joopberis
joopberis Question owner
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Thank you for the fast reply. That was helpful. True, the ETP shield is usually gray and now I know that's because my installed extensions work before ETP comes into play.

I've been using privacy extensions since way before Firefox introduced tracking protection and I realize it's a personal choice for people to use extensions or not.

In your opinion, how much overlap is there between Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials? If someone has one of these installed, does he/she even need any of the others?