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Ephemeral Firefox in Ubuntu (1/3)

ephemeral firefox

This post will describe how to create an Ephemeral Firefox session. The ultimate goal of an Ephemeral Firefox session is to unlink your browsing sessions day-to-day and reduce tracking via fingerprinting.

Part 1/3: Ephemeral Firefox in Ubuntu Part 2/3: Ephemeral Firefox with Extensions Part 3/3: Ephemeral Firefox as a Site-Specific Browser

This technique can also be used to compartmentalize your internet activity by using the Ephemeral Firefox session as a Site Specific Browser. This can be especially useful for websites that are infamous for tracking users across the internet and selling the data they collect. For example, you can blacklist all facebook domains in your main browser and only use Ephemeral Firefox sessions that have been whitelisted exclusively for facebook domains–effectively compartmentalizing your facebook activity from the rest of your internet activity.

Another great use-case for an Ephemeral Firefox is for public access computers such as those at libraries, hotels, and printing shops.

Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

About Michael


. . . → Read More: Ephemeral Firefox in Ubuntu (1/3)

How to check Whonix version in Qubes

Whonix 14 just came out last month. I went to update, but I couldn’t figure out what version I was currently running. The documentation said to run this command, but the output didn’t make sense when I ran it on my whonix-gw TemplateVM.

Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

About Michael


. . . → Read More: How to check Whonix version in Qubes

Package Manager Search Commands

In a given week, I touch maybe a half dozen different Operating Systems/Distributions. Some are similar to others (centos, rhel), some–not so much (solaris). The common commands are easy enough to remember ( @ls@ vs @dir@ ), but I always forget how to search through each OS’s package manager for a software package. For my reference (and perhaps yours?) here’s a list for each of the OSs’ package managers I use frequently:

yum – RHEL/CentOS

yum list

apt – Debian/Ubuntu

apt-cache search

pacman – Arch

pacman –sync –search pacman -Ss

portage – Gentoo

emerge –search # pkg names only emerge –searchdesc # pkg names & descriptions emerge -S # alias of –searchdesc  

See Also: “Install ‘build-essential’ on RHEL/CentOS and OpenSolaris”:/wp/?p=231

Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

About Michael

tech.michaelaltfield.net/

Install “build-essential” on RHEL/CentOS and OpenSolaris

Debian

If you want to be able to compile packages in debain/ubunutu, you can issue the following command:

apt-get install build-essential

 

Red Hat

If you want to be able to compile packages in red hat/centos, you can issue the following command:

yum install make gcc gcc-c++ kernel-devel

…or, if you don’t care about maintaining a small footprint, you can get *all* of the development packages (including X devs–eww):

yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

 

Open Solaris

If you want to be able to compile packages in open solaris, you can issue the following command:

pkg install SUNWgcc Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

About Michael

tech.michaelaltfield.net/