Advice Request What extensions would you recommend?

Please provide comments and solutions that are helpful to the author of this topic.

Enzo

New Member
Thread author
Aug 24, 2015
2
Hi everyone,

First of all excuse me if the subject has already been discussed before.

My question is intended to know what extensions you would recommend, differentiating by categories (security, privacy, utilities, etc.)

In this regard, I have seen in the forum topics intended to discuss recommended extensions to block advertising, or as much respect security, but I think it would be good to create a thread with the extensions to consider according to their function.

All this derives because in Chrome and Firefox I have multiple extensions that are sure to be unnecessary, repetitive or worse than other options.

I thank you in advance for any suggestions you make and I reiterate that an "official" thread on recommended extensions would be fine.

Thanks again.
 
F

ForgottenSeer 72227

I am of the KISS philosophy.

Personally a good Adblocker such as UBlock Origion, or Adguard is really all one needs IMHO. Both of these blockers do more than just block ad's, as they cover some of the tracking/privacy aspect as well. Firefox is very privacy focused, so they have quite a few features built into the browser all ready, making many of the privacy focused extensions redundant.

Depending on your surfing habits and which AV you use, some may also recommend something like Malwarebytes browser protection, Bitdefender Trafficlight, Emsisoft Browser protection, etc.. to help with malware/phishing sites, but most browsers today are pretty good at that by default, so you can add one if you prefer, but I wouldn't go adding all of them thinking that you will be more secure adding them all vs having 1 of them. Depending on which security program you have, the malware/phishing aspect may already be covered, so those extensions would be redundant IMHO.

Some extensions may help with other aspects other than security, but those are really personal preference. Like with anything only try to keep the extensions that you actually use and find useful. Like with actual programs the more extensions you have, the more chances of something breaking, slowing things down, increasing your memory usage and there's always the potential of creating security holes.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Gandalf_The_Grey

Level 76
Verified
Honorary Member
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
Apr 24, 2016
6,506
Like @Raiden I would suggest less is more (y)
An ad blocker like uBlock Origin or AdGuard
A password manager like Bitwarden or Lastpass
And (I quote) depending on your surfing habits, which AV and which browser you use, an extra security extension like Bitdefender TraficLight, Windows Defender Browser Protection extension, Netcraft extension.
More info and test found in this thread: Q&A - [Updated 29/12/2018] Browser extension comparison: Malwares and Phishings
 
F

ForgottenSeer 72227

Like @Raiden I would suggest less is more (y)
An ad blocker like uBlock Origin or AdGuard
A password manager like Bitwarde or Lastpass
And (I quote) depending on your surfing habits, which AV and which browser you use, an extra security extension like Bitdefender TraficLight, Windows Defender Browser Protection extension, Netcraft extension.
More info and test found in this thread: Q&A - [Updated 29/12/2018] Browser extension comparison: Malwares and Phishings

Hehe I forgot about the password manager!

So yes an Adblocker, password manager and maybe a security extension would be my list.
 

Deletedmessiah

Level 25
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
Jan 16, 2017
1,469
Dark Reader, its not a security extension but good for your eyes. Has whitelisting option unlike built in dark mode in Chromium browsers.
For adblockers, I also recommend ublock origin or Adguard and bitwarden or lastpass for password manager. Either option works for these two categories.
 

Back3

Level 14
Verified
Top Poster
Apr 14, 2019
654
My antivirus is Windows Defender. For the last 6 months , with Chrome and Firefox, my three main extensions were Adguard, Bitdefender TrafficLight and Privacy Badger. I definitely had a slowdown with both browsers. I think the culprit was Adguard.
I'm now trying Ghostery, TrafficLight and I don't care about cookies. Both browsers are faster. Page load is better.Anti-tracking and Ad Blocking are good.So far so good.
Very easy to measure page loading with Ghostery.
I also use the New Edge to go to 5-6 web sites: Ghostery and Windows Defender Browser Protection. Page Load with Ghostery: 1.41 sec; with both extensions 1.44.
 
Last edited:

Gandalf_The_Grey

Level 76
Verified
Honorary Member
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
Apr 24, 2016
6,506
My antivirus is Windows Defender. For the last 6 months , with Chrome and Firefox, my three main extensions were Adguard, Bitdefender TrafficLight and Privacy Badger. I definitely had a slowdown with both browsers. I think the culprit was Adguard.
I'm now trying Ghostery, TrafficLight and I don't care about cookies. Both browsers are faster. Page load is better.Anti-tracking and Ad Blocking are good.So far so good.
Very easy to measure page loading with Ghostery.
I also use the New Edge to go to 5-6 web sites: Ghostery and Windows Defender Browser Protection. Page Load with Ghostery: 1.41 sec; with both extensions 1.44.
You could also try uBlock Origin could be faster than Ghostery (don't know) and AdGuard (know for sure).
 

Sampei Nihira

Level 6
Verified
Well-known
Dec 26, 2019
287
As for Firefox i can highly recommend ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js and their site about extensions (addons): ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js

The here posted browser "protection" like Bitdefender Trafficlight, Emsisoft Browser protection, etc are not recommend as they break the TLS encryption and also break your privacy as how they work.

Ghostery is also a privacy madness (remember WOT? It's the same).

As minimum setup i recommend uBlock Origin with browser internal tracking & malware protection.

In my opinion, the "Malware domain" list is obsolete.
It must be replaced with something else.
I personally use 2 custom lists in my browser without Google safebrowsing function.
 

Gandalf_The_Grey

Level 76
Verified
Honorary Member
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
Apr 24, 2016
6,506
As for Firefox i can highly recommend ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js and their site about extensions (addons): ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js

The here posted browser "protection" like Bitdefender Trafficlight, Emsisoft Browser protection, etc are not recommend as they break the TLS encryption and also break your privacy as how they work.

Ghostery is also a privacy madness (remember WOT? It's the same).

As minimum setup i recommend uBlock Origin with browser internal tracking & malware protection.
Sorry, Bitdefender TrafficLight and Emsisoft Browser protection do not break the TLS encryption.
Bitdefender sends the visited URL back to Bitdefender to check if it's blacklisted, Emsisoft uses a hash for that.
Instead of sending each full website URL to a cloud server for matching, it only sends a calculated hash value of the domain name of each newly visited site to our servers once and then receives a list of matching patterns that are applied locally on your computer. Those patterns are then kept for successive visits of pages on the same host/domain, which not only speeds up the matching significantly, but also means that Emsisoft doesn’t know any of the details of your browsing activity.
 

Gandalf_The_Grey

Level 76
Verified
Honorary Member
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
Apr 24, 2016
6,506
That's good then but doesn't change my mind. It only increase attack surface and uniqueness of browser fringerprint.


privacy madness as i say


So like Firefox with Google Safebrowsing. Maybe Microsoft too with their Chromium-Edge & SmartScreen. Same here - i don't see any reason to increase attack surface and uniqueness of browser fringerprint.

Always try KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) and also always try to use/ install as less as possible. That's the keyword for secure systems
While I agree with the KISS principle, I find that extension like Netcraft can add to your protection as seen here:

Netcraft options:

Aantekening 2020-01-12 202316.jpg
 
Last edited:

Enzo

New Member
Thread author
Aug 24, 2015
2
Hi everyone,

First of all thank the intervention of:

@Raiden, @Gandalf_The_Grey, @Deletedmessiah, @Back3, @Fuzzy_Bunny, @oldschool, @security123 and @Sampei Nihira; when suggesting extensions to have installed.

About my configuration, the extensions mentioned already had them installed although with others that, for sure, will be unnecessary due to duplication.

Specifically I comment:

OS: Windows 10 Pro 1909, 18363.535

Security Apps: KIS 20.0.14 as resident protection, and for periodic scans use Emsisoft Kit Emergency for example.

As for extensions are multiple:

  1. AdGuard AdBlocker
  2. Adobe Acrobat
  3. Any.do Extension
  4. Checker Plus for Gmail™
  5. Chrono Gestor de Descargas
  6. Descargar +
  7. Disconnect
  8. Documentos de Google sin conexión
  9. Ghostery
  10. Google Mail Checker
  11. HTTPS Everywhere
  12. Kaspersky Protection
  13. LastPass
  14. Nimbus Screenshot & Screen Video Recorder
  15. ScriptSafe
  16. Session Buddy
  17. Session Manager
  18. Shared Inbox & CRM for Gmail | Gmelius
  19. SimpleExtManager
  20. TabCloud
  21. Todoist para Chrome
  22. uBlock Origin
  23. WOT
  24. Xmarks
  25. ZenMate Web Firewal


As you can see, in terms of ads / security / privacy there are several installed, as well as for saving sessions (which would be interesting if it was in the cloud or similar) or regarding download manager.

From them, and from what you have indicated, I can get an idea of which ones to uninstall, thanking any new comments on which extensions to keep.

- About Adguard: is it worth buying the software or is the extension more than enough?

Thanking everyone, again, your time to respond, I look forward to any comments.

Greetings.
 

TairikuOkami

Level 35
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
May 13, 2017
2,453
I personally use 2 custom lists in my browser without Google safebrowsing function
Do you mind sharing, please? I was never able to find a good malware filter and I could use some, filterlists.com is a mess now, no search. :cautious:
ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js
They do not recommend cookies extensions, umm. While their reasoning is valid, it is also invalid, live cookies can do a lot, till they are cleaned.
That's good then but doesn't change my mind. It only increase attack surface and uniqueness of browser fringerprint.
That depends whenever you care about privacy more than about security. Privacy wise users use VPN anyway, so extensions do not matter much.
Firefox & Chromium-Edge already block phishing, suspicious sites.
That is not in question, but the effectiveness of it is, similar to which AV is better, no filter is the best and unlike with AV, you can use several filters.
 

Protomartyr

Level 7
Sep 23, 2019
314
uBlock Origin is commonly recommended and is definitely worth it. How light it is depends on how you configure it and how many filter lists you have.

An alternative to uBlock Origin that I've found to be super light is using uMatrix and configuring it similarly to how @Lenny_Linux runs it according to this post in this thread.

The only modifications I've made to Lenny's uMatrix setup are:
Currently deciding which setup I'd prefer as both uBlock Origin and uMatrix are versatile and allow for lots of customization.
 

About us

  • MalwareTips is a community-driven platform providing the latest information and resources on malware and cyber threats. Our team of experienced professionals and passionate volunteers work to keep the internet safe and secure. We provide accurate, up-to-date information and strive to build a strong and supportive community dedicated to cybersecurity.

User Menu

Follow us

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to know first about the latest cybersecurity incidents and malware threats.

Top