5 browser extensions to protect your privacy online.

We could also have devised a list of all the things we hate about click bait articles, but the number 3 would have been too shocking for you.

If you use passbolt on a daily basis you already know that it requires a web extension to work. As explained in a previous blog post this is required to provide additional security. Like passbolt there are many browser extensions that one can use to protect their privacy online, so here are a few that we like and recommend to our friends. Here are some of our trusted favorites.

uBlock Origin: this free open source extension allows you to block multiple types of content. While it comes out of the box configured to block the most intrusive advertisements, not everyone knows that it is also effective against trackers and malware sites. To do this it relies on open public lists such as URLHaus and Easylist. Of course it is possible for you to configure your own rules and block other kinds of undesirable content.

Privacy Badger: this open source extension is developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting online privacy and free speech. It is a bit different from other “blocking” extensions in the sense that it focuses specifically on blocking trackers and not advertisements per say. Basically it blocks advertisements from platforms that do not respect your privacy. Privacy Badger looks for intrusive tracking techniques such as “supercookies,” and browser fingerprinting.

Https Everywhere: another great extension from the EFF done in partnership with The Tor Project and DuckDuckGo. While more and more websites are available using encryption (HTTPS) , unfortunately they often do not route you to the encrypted version automatically or may do so by first defaulting to HTTP, leaking some precious information on the way. This extension fixes these problems.

Mailvelope: Did you know that you can reuse your passbolt openpgp key to encrypt your emails? Mailvelope is a browser add-on that you can use to securely encrypt your emails with OpenPGP using the most popular webmail providers. Passbolt and mailvelope team collaborated together on multiple occasions, since both projects are open source and have a lot in common technologically speaking! Indeed some techniques pioneered by the Mailvelope team were an inspiration for the passbolt security model.

Cookie Autodelete: this extension lets you define which sites you would like to automatically delete unwanted cookies when you close tabs or your browser window. Of course it will let you still keep the ones you want to stay logged in the websites you used most often.

Did we forget anyone? Do you know some less popular extensions that should be added to this list? Let us know in the comments or on the community forum!