Tips
How to turn on private browsing in Firefox?
All web browsers now have a privacy feature called private browsing that lets you browse websites without your history being tracked locally on your computer. In Firefox, private browsing works a bit differently than other browsers.
In addition to not recording your web browsing history, Firefox also enables tracking protection. This will block parts of sites that try to track your browsing history across multiple sites. Firefox will prevent this when you are in private mode.
STEPS:
- To enable private browsing in Firefox, click on the hamburger icon at the top right and then select New Private Window.
- You can also just use the CTRL + SHIFT + P keyboard shortcut.
- You will be able to tell you are in the private mode because of the mask located in the top right of the window.
As with all private browsing, your activity is not tracked locally in your browser, but your ISP, employer or even software installed on your system can possibly track everything you are doing.
By default, it uses the list provided by Disconnect, which is an online security and privacy product. Firefox uses the standard list, which blocks common advertising trackers, social sharing trackers, and analytics trackers.
If you want even more protection, you can enable the strict protection list, which will block all trackers. The only issue with this is that it might break some sites since it blocks a lot of stuff.
- You can enable the stricter list by clicking on the hamburger icon, then clicking on Options, and then going to Privacy.
- Now go ahead and click on the Disconnect. me strict protection list and then click Save Changes.
- If you need to allow trackers on specific sites, you can click on the little shield icon in the address bar and then click on Disable protection for this session.
- Finally, if you want to enable private browsing mode all the time in Firefox, you can do that by going to the same Privacy tab under Options and then choosing Never remember history next to Firefox will: under the History heading.
- Choosing this option is the same as private browsing mode. The only difference is that you will not see that purple mask icon in the browser window. Firefox will have to restart in order for the changes to take effect. You can also click on Use custom settings for history and then check the Always use private browsing mode box.