{"id":7056,"date":"2019-01-01T12:33:55","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T12:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/?p=7056"},"modified":"2019-01-08T10:17:32","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T10:17:32","slug":"firefox-is-now-placing-ads-and-here-is-how-to-disable-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/2019\/01\/01\/firefox-is-now-placing-ads-and-here-is-how-to-disable-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefox is now placing ads and here is how to disable it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FirefoxFirefox user discovered that Mozilla Firefox is displaying ads on the home or new tab page. When you open Firefox on your desktop, an advertisement banner at the bottom page displayed. The advertisement read as follows:<\/p>\n

For the holidays, we got you a little something just for using Firefox! Book your next hotel stay on Booking.com today and get a free $20 Amazon gift card. Happy Holidays from Firefox!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mozilla explained that it was just an experiment. A Mozilla spokesperson told VentureBeat<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It was not a paid placement or advertisement. We are continually looking for more ways to say thanks for using Firefox.\u201d The Booking.com snippet ran for five days and ended on schedule on December 30th.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, many users of Firefox did not agree with Mozilla.<\/p>\n

Firefox is now placing ads and how do I disable it?<\/h2>\n

These ads come<\/a> from about:home snippet service. It is a management service that assembles and deliver content snippets to the about:home page in Firefox. Firefox user expects the best user experience and open standards from Mozilla. They do not want to see ads, and shenanigans carried out by an open source project. No wonder Firefox market share is declining every year.<\/p>\n

Please note that we all get to see free content on the web due to sponsorship from various corporate interests. Firefox is free too. Managing a web browser is not easy. Recently Microsoft decided to throw away old code base of Edge browser and making next version of Edge browser on top of Chromium<\/a>. Mozilla gets the majority of funding from search engines and other sources. Mozilla needs to pay for hosting\/infrastructure and engineers salaries too. I don\u2019t have any business solution that would solve all Mozilla funding problems, but below I discuss a few possibilities to disable tracking and other options for personal usage.<\/p>\n

How to disable ads on Firefox<\/h2>\n

Type the following URL in Firefox: about:preferences#home
\nClick on the Home > scroll down and uncheck Snippets option box:\"HowDisabling advertisement banners on Firefox\u2019s home or new tab page
\nFurther, I suggest that you set Home and New Tab pages to a Blank Page. Make sure all other checkboxes are unchecked too:\"DisableConfiguration Firefox Home and other options<\/p>\n

But, wait there is more<\/h3>\n

One can harden Firefox using user.js<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A user.js configuration file for Mozilla Firefox designed to harden browser settings and make it more secure. The main goals are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Limit the probabilities to track the user through web analytics.<\/li>\n
  2. Harden the browser against known data disclosure or code execution vulnerabilities.<\/li>\n
  3. Limit the browser from storing anything even remotely sensitive persistently.<\/li>\n
  4. Make sure the browser doesn\u2019t reveal too much information to shoulder surfers.<\/li>\n
  5. Harden the browser\u2019s encryption (cipher suites, protocols, trusted CAs).<\/li>\n
  6. Limit possibilities to uniquely identify the browser\/device using browser fingerprinting.<\/li>\n
  7. Hopefully limit the attack surface by disabling various features.<\/li>\n
  8. Still be usable in daily use.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Open-source alternatives to Firefox<\/h2>\n

    Pale Moon<\/a> is a free and open source web browser. It runs on Microsoft Windows and Linux with a strong focus on efficiency and customization.<\/p>\n

    Brave<\/a> is yet another free and open-source browser. It is built by a team of privacy-focused, performance-oriented pioneers of the web.<\/p>\n

    For more info and see original Reddit thread here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Posted by: Vivek Gite<\/h2>\n

    The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system\/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux\/Unix and open source topics via RSS\/XML feed<\/a> or weekly email newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Firefox user discovered that Mozilla Firefox is displaying ads on the home or new tab page. When you open Firefox on your desktop, an advertisement banner at the bottom page displayed. The advertisement read as follows: For the holidays, we got you a little something just for using Firefox! Book your next hotel stay on … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “Firefox is now placing ads and here is how to disable it”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7385,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7056\/revisions\/7385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}