Extensions are interesting little technical widgets. Most assume they are simply tools but some see it as art. I can learn a lot about a computer user by the browser extensions they have installed and use. As a security professional, I have a handful of security oriented extensions (in addition to the ones that make the web more usable or that save me money).
I regularly receive requests from readers to list my extensions and to be honest, they often change. I remove extensions I don’t use, deactivate extensions I sometimes use and add new ones that I learn about. So right now, here are the extensions I think you will find the most useful .They are Google Chrome extensions but they work in any Chromium browser (like MS Edge).
It shows the tech stack a website is built on
Generate random web browsing traffic to obfuscate actual browsing behavior to avoid profiling through 3rd party observation. Think of this as data poisoning for the companies that track you.
This extension will automatically remove tracking elements from URLs to help protect your privacy when browsing the Internet.
A tool that lets you clean browser tracking tools.
Let’s use block invisible web trackers
A tool that allows you to monitor a webpage and alert you when it changes.
This is a swiss army knife of internet privacy. Here are the feature this extension offers
Escape Advertising Tracker Networks — Our Privacy Protection will block all the hidden third-party trackers we can find, exposing the major advertising networks tracking you over time, so that you can track who's trying to track you.
Increase Encryption Protection — We force sites to use an encrypted connection where available, protecting your data from prying eyes, like Internet Service Providers.
Search Privately — You share your most personal information with your search engine, like your financial, medical, and political questions. What you search for is your own business, which is why DuckDuckGo search doesn't track you. Ever.
Decode Privacy Policies — We’ve partnered with Terms of Service Didn't Read to include their scores and labels of website terms of service and privacy policies, where available.
DuckDuckGo has said “DuckDuckGo has announced that its Chrome browser extension has been updated to block Google's new tracking technology.” You can test if your browser currently supports flock using this EFF AmIFloced website.
EFF Chrome extensions
Robots Exclusion Checker is designed to visually indicate whether any robots exclusions are preventing your page from being crawled or indexed by Search Engines. But a security person could then take those robot files, manually check those pages and find out why the organization doesn’t them indexed. Sometimes the exclusion is because they don’t want Google indexing active pages, other times it’s because those pages contain information the organization doesn’t want outsiders to easily find (pricing, org info, etc).
Social Disconnect Plus is a browser extension that removes all sorts of Social Media content on webpages (i.e. the Facebook like button and other widgets).
uBlock Origin is the best ad blocker available but it does so much more. It is a powerful HTML firewall to protect you from several web attacks.
With this extension, you can quickly and easily switch between user-agent strings. Also, you can set up specific URLs that you want to spoof every time.
Easily determine if the Internet Archive has previous versions of the webpage you are on.
