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Is there a web browser out there that is more suited for paranoid people? Why would you choose it/ What feature would your ideal paranoia browser have? For instance i would want one which Sends NO User-Agent information to the website.

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For some specific platform (Windows?) or for any? – Jonik Jan 29 '10 at 21:40
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Why do you want to send no user agent info? Faking the info tells equally as much about you and will probably make less trouble. – foraidt Jan 29 '10 at 21:43
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I'd assume sending NO info makes you unique, and therefore trackable. – Phoshi Jan 29 '10 at 22:19
Your ISP is still going to know where the traffic is coming from, unless you take further steps. Depends on how paranoid you are. – Bratch Feb 1 '10 at 15:32
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7 Answers

up vote 9 down vote

Try The Paranoid Kit extension collection for Firefox.

Also Privoxy is a proxy server that strips any personal information from requests no matter what browser do you use. It is used in Tor by default, too.

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+1 very good find – William Hilsum Jan 29 '10 at 22:18
Odd. Is this on the RUSSIAN Mozilla site only? – tcv Jan 29 '10 at 23:54
@tcv: try addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collection/paranoia if you prefer... – quack quixote Jan 30 '10 at 0:18
@all: fixed link – whitequark Jan 30 '10 at 0:33
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up vote 5 down vote

After following the above steps, it's worth popping over to http://panopticlick.eff.org/ . This page will tell you how unique your browser fingerprint is. (i.e. how easily it can be proved to be the browser you're using)

Yo give you an idea how scary this is, even in incognito mode, my browser fingerprint is totally identifiable from nearly 1/4 of a million other browsers.

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+1 really good tool. Didn't ever know that someone can track plugin list of my browser (the tool said it's unique!) – whitequark Jan 29 '10 at 23:56
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up vote 4 down vote

It is possible to disable/mask the the user agent in pretty much any browser (if that's your main concern).

Use a web proxy where applicable (e.g. Tor/Privoxy).

Other than that, run your web browser inside a sandbox (e.g. Sandboxie, preferably with a RAM disk as container) for ultimate privacy, this will leave NO browsing traces on your system when you turn it off. Not even the most sophisticated computer forensic tools will be able to recover any traces as nothing will be written to a physical disk.

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+1 I like the idea of Sandboxie with RAM disk – Amro Feb 4 '10 at 14:34
@Amro - this will also take care of the inconvenience having to delete the sandbox manually :) – Molly7244 Feb 4 '10 at 14:51
BTW you can configure the sandbox to automatically delete its content on exit. Yet this RAM disk idea is for the really paranoid of us who wants to even make the use of recovery tools impossible! I feel all evilish ;) – Amro Feb 17 '10 at 23:31
@Amro - Yes, you can delete the content automatically, it's under 'Delete Invocation'. and using a RAM disk isn't necessarily about paranoia but convenience and, above all, about speed as the read/write access times of a RAM disk are about a gazillion times faster than your average platter HDD. – Molly7244 Feb 18 '10 at 0:04
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up vote 1 down vote

I know that was not exactly the question, but if you're really paranoid about that, go get a Live-CD like Knoppix, Kanotix, DSL or the Ubuntu one. This will not even leave traces on the computer that there was an operating system. ;)

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up vote 0 down vote

You can try JonDoFox.

JonDoFox is a profile for the Mozilla Firefox web browser particularly optimized for anonymous and secure web surfing.

Combined with JonDo it is very powerful and secure.

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up vote 0 down vote

The simple answer is that it depends what you are doing. The more reason you have to hide, the more reason other people have to find you.

As a general rule, Tor and the Tor browser are probably the best for protecting your privacy, but don't assume that makes you immune from the law. If you're doing strongly objectionable things on the Internet you'll find yourself at the wrong end of some billion-dollar US departments with UAVs.

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up vote -1 down vote

How about Chrome's Incognito mode?

Might not be quite paranoid enough for you though ;-)

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Chrome is the last browser you should consider for privacy!! Look for SRWare Iron instead.. – Amro Feb 4 '10 at 14:35
No point suggesting that to me, I'm obviously not that paranoid ;-) (And if I were, I certainly wouldn't be using this here internet thing as my tin foil hat has no effect here!) – Garry Feb 4 '10 at 16:52
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