brent Changing the defaults involves trade-offs (sometimes serious) between functionality and privacy."
I love this quote because I LOVE 'for examples.' The only thing I can think of are some deep tweaks (like referer head, for example) that might break a site. Interested your take on this trade off.
Let me walk you through, at a high level, what I do with Firefox settings, remembering that the point of the exercise is to limit, as much as reasonable, information flowing to Mozilla and others:
General -- No much, although I look at Applications and set them all to "Always Ask" except for pdf.
Home -- I remove everything in Firefox Home Content except web search. If you look at "Top Sites", for example, that requires Firefox to track.
Search -- I set a single search engine. I remove everything in Search Suggestions. I uncheck everything in Search Shortcuts except my single search engine. I set history to "Never remember".
Privacy and Security -- I remove as much as possible. I set the browser to delete cookies and sites upon close. I basically uncheck everything else that isn't a block or a warning, and remove all permissions except location. I limit Mozilla to technical information.
Sync -- I sync Bookmarks and Add-ons and nothing else.
Most of the things I remove or disable are relatively harmless in and of themselves, but taken together, the aggregate can become significant.
I use Containers for medical, financial and other sensitive sites, and I use Cookie AutoDelete to remove cookies when I close tabs.
In short, I prefer to send/save as little data as reasonably possible. Does that mean I miss out on some things? Does it mean that I'm not using the browser as designed? Sure. To me, its worth it.
