Tinfoil for Firefox provides easy access to advanced privacy preferences

While you can make privacy related configuration changes in the Firefox options, many advanced options become only available when you load about:config or install add-ons that provide you with frontend access to those settings.

You can check out our list of best privacy add-ons for Firefox which gives you an overview of good extensions for that purpose.

Tinfoil is a brand new extension for Firefox that makes quite a few privacy related preferences available in its options.

It sets some automatically according to the extension description and ships with a "full tinfoil" button to make aggressive changes on top of that.

Recovery options to restore the add-on to its default state and to restore all Firefox settings to their values prior to installing Tinfoil are provided as well. There is also an option to keep the Tinfoil settings after removal of the add-on.

While some may like that approach, others may prefer to go through the preferences one by one instead to enable or disable them individually.

This is possible as well as they are listed by the add-on in its options.

Each preference is listed with its name and a description that explains what it controls so that you can decide whether you want it enabled or not.

Here is the full list of preferences that you can control using Tinfoil currently:

• browser.cache.disk.enable
• browser.cache.memory.enable
• browser.cache.offline.enable
• browser.nettabpage.directory.ping
• browser.nettabpage.directory.source
• browser.nettabpage.enabled
• browser.nettabpage.enhanced
• browser.newtab.url
• browser.pagethumbnails.capturing_disabled
• browser.safebrowsing.enabled
• browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled
• browser.search.suggest.enabled
• browser.send_pings
• datareporting.healthreport.service.enabled
• datareporting.healthreport.uploadingEnabled
• datareporting.policy.dataSubmissionEnabled
• dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled
• dom.ipc.plugins.flash.subprocess.crashreporter.enabled
• dom.storage.enabled
• geo.enabled
• media.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled
• media.peerconnection.enabled
• network.cookie.behavior
• network.cookie.lifetimePolicy
• network.dns.disablePrefetch
• network.http.referer.spoofSource
• network.http.referer.XOiriginPolicy
• network.http.sendRefererHeader
• network.http.sendSecureXSiteReferrer
• network.prefetch-next
• network.proxy.socks_remote_dns
• plugin.state.flash
• plugins.click_to_play
• plugins.enumerable_names
• privacy.donottrackheader.enabled
• toolkit.telemetry.enabled.

You can change the state of any preference listed by the extension easily using it. The descriptions help a lot in determining whether it makes sense to to do. For some, you may need to have a certain technical background to understand what is going on but most are fairly easy to understand.

Firefox users who don't want to install an extension for that can load about:config manually to go through each preference manually by searching for it.

It makes sense to go through the advanced preferences at least once and modify privacy and security related preferences that you are not comfortable with.

Tinfoil does a great job at bringing important privacy related preferences to your attention so that you can go through them quickly and without having to research them all individually before you can do so.

Since you can configure it to keep the settings after removal, there is nothing that keeps you from installing it, going through the preferences it lists modifying those that you want and uninstall the extension after you are done doing so.

Now You: Is there a privacy related preference that you find essential? If so which is it?