Do you leave your Digital Fingerprint?? What if i say "You" do, most of the time!!??

The title "Do you leave your Digital Fingerprint?? What if i say you do!! Yes, you may be one among the 99% people without your knowledge!" itself explains the content we're gonna see in this post. Yes, about digital footprinting, Browser hardening and so on..

Its been so long, since i wrote a post in this year. Thanks to the pandemic.:( 

After so long, why this post especially??

I decided to write this post, as more number of our family/readers started falling as victims for the online Surveillance, malware's, Ransomware, and much more, which even we don't know that exists.!

So, its a kind of informational post and if you are worried a lot about your privacy, then by following this post, you can save yourself from leaving your fingerprints or footprints as much as possible whenever possible.

Okay, before we get in, let me explain some terms in short, so that our beginner's or people new to Sec can understand.

What is digital footprint or What is digital fingerprint?

If i have to say in one line this might be this..

"Every information you leave on internet about you can be traced back to you!!"

Yes, you are leaving more information about you, than you actually know.. Let me say a couple of information/examples..

You are visiting one website let's take famous website like google or even our site. So, whenever you visit this sites, an information about your device you used will be communicated to the web servers. For example: What device you are using, what is your IP address, what is your Mac address, your location, your language,etc thingss..


You may say, this is how internet works, or this is necessary for internet to work, of course it is essential for the internet to work, but that's not what's happening here.. 

Some sites even collect more information than this like what do you like, what you don't like, what is your upcoming plan,etc.. things.!

This information is being misused by lot of companies, especially by advertising agencies to serve you the ads that are required, forcing you to buy the things that you are interested and not interested. Does it limits to advertising alone?? Obviously, No!! Its more than that..

Imagine this scenario, you had planned to travel this week to some abc place, this information as some sites like social networking sites already know,  they will share the info to advertisers (based on algorithms) and will provide releavant ads like booking a taxi,etc.. 

What if it falls into wrong hands?? They can even put a big sketch to finish you without any trouble, which is the sad truth.. 

So, is there anyway we can prevent this, yes there are multiple ways like using VPN/tor,etc.. which i had covered in 2020 itself through this post. 

But, there is one important concept called Browser hardening, which we will see in this post.

What is Browser Hardening?

If you wanna know that, i would say, if you can understand the word hardening, it will be easier to understand browser hardening. So, let's see what is hardening...

Hmmm, to say in layman's terms, hardening is just a piece of thing/component which will provide additional quality to the item. Let's take your mobile as an example, by using it normally without any protectors like covers, screenguards your mobile is vulnerable to threats right? when i say threats i mean, it can break/damage when it gets fallen or slipped accidentally. So, to prevent those kind of damages most of our mobiles now comes with gorilla glass kind of technology. Its the same kind of process in our systems too.. i;e., whenever we deploy additional security measures to protect our system from vulnerabilities the process is known as hardening. The same, if we deploy additional security measures to protect our browsers(to save ourselves) then we can call it as hardening web browser or Browser hardening.

Why, only browsers at first? 

If you use internet a lot, then you know the answer! Most of our virus, malware's, ransomware and almost everything that helps our PC to get infected faster, happens through browser.! So, its our duty to ensure we are deploying additional security to our browsers, irrespective of developers doing that..So, 

Where can i do  browser hardening or how to do browser hardening..?

There are lot of friendly sites, that teaches about this, however i will share how to do this on our Firefox browser, which is a lot better when it comes to providing tracking protection than other browsers. 

Please note, that this will break the sites you visit, when i say break, your browser won't be able to display the site as it was created, and might display poor User friendly experience. But, if your main aim is to get information/privacy, instead of worrying about the Experience, then you are good to try this.

How to do Firefox Browser Hardening?

For this you have to visit about:config page which most of us, doesn't know even exists.! So, first type about:config on your address bar (the area where you type google.com or logeshwaran.org) in that window it displays, disable or enable as mentioned below..

Note: I will create a separate updated post on this, once i collect more information from our other useful sites.. But, if you make the following changes on about config, then it itself will be more than enough..
  • privacy.firstparty.isolate =>> true
  • privacy.resistFingerprinting =>> true
  • browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo => 0
  • browser.urlbar.speculativeConnect.enabled => False
  • dom.battery.enabled => False
  • dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled => False
  • geo.enabled => False
  • privacy.trackingprotection.enabled => true
  • browser.cache.offline.enable => False
  • browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled => False 
  • browser.safebrowsing.phishing.enabled => False
  • browser.send_pings => False
  • security.ssl.enable_False_start => False
  • media.eme.enabled => False
  • media.gmp-widevinecdm.enabled => False
  • media.navigator.enabled => False
  • network.cookie.cookieBehavior => 1
  • network.cookie.lifetimePolicy => 2
  • network.http.referer.trimmingPolicy => 2
  • network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy => 2
  • network.http.referer.XOriginTrimmingPolicy => 2
  • webgl.disabled => true
  • browser.sessionstore.privacy_level => 2
  • network.IDN_show_punycode => true
  • extensions.blocklist.url => https://blocklists.settings.services.mozilla.com/v1/blocklist/3/%20/%20/
  • media.peerconnection.enabled => true
  • media.peerconnection.turn.disable => true
  • media.peerconnection.use_document_iceservers => False
  • media.peerconnection.video.enabled => False
  • media.peerconnection.identity.timeout => 1
  • media.webRTC - all options disabled
  • security.ssl3.rsa_des_ede3_sha => False
  • security.ssl.require_safe_negotiation => true
  • security.tls.version.min => 3
  • security.tls.enable_0rtt_data => False
  • browser.formfill.enable => False
  • browser.cache.disk.enable => False
  • browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl => False
  • browser.cache.memory.enable => False
  • browser.cache.offline.enable => False
  • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.telemetry => False
  • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.telemetry => False
  • browser.ping-centre.telemetry => False
  • devtools.onboarding.telemetry.logged => False
  • toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled => False
  • toolkit.telemetry.bhrping.enabled => False
  • toolkit.telemetry.firstshutdownping.enabled => False
  • toolkit.telemetry.hybridcontent.enabled => False
  • toolkit.telemetry.newprofileping.enabled => False
  • toolkit.telemetry.unified => False
  • toolkit.telemetry.updateping.enabled => False
  • toolkit.telemetry.shutdownPingSender.enabled => False
  • network.prefetch-next => False
  • network.dns.disablePrefetch => true
  • network.http.sendRefererHeader => 0
  • dom.serviceWorkers.enabled => False



This is one of the hidden option..:

Right click on a blank area of the about config page and select new -> boolean. In the window type security.ssl.disable_session_identifiers and hit Enter. Also, Search another field, security.ssl.disable_session_identifiers and update it as true

security.ssl.enable_false_start = false

Post this, like you done for the about:config now type about:memory and select anonymize option.

That's it.. You're nearly set to go.. 

Enjoy your Safe Browsing!!

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