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How do you hide installed plugins in Firefox?

This website shows that too much about you can be seen: http://centralops.net/asp/co/BrowserMirror.vbs.asp

Most plugins don't need to be seen by content providers.

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    wow, Browser Mirror is pretty nice for spotting security holes...+1!
    – studiohack ♦
    Apr 29, 2010 at 17:08
  • crashes my firefox 3.6.3 on win7x64
    – Nifle
    May 27, 2010 at 22:56

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Go to about:config and type plugins.enumerable_names in the search box.

Set it to blank and that will hide all plugins from a bulk plugin query. Individual plugins can still be queried by name, but this will help reduce your fingerprint a lot.

This works on Firefox 29+.

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    Why minus one? This looks like a legit useful answer to me… Upvoting but I would still like to know why someone did downvote it.
    – jeromej
    Oct 12, 2014 at 16:04
  • there seems t be no enumerable_names in my about:config, do you know what the new name would be?
    – Greg0ry
    Aug 8, 2016 at 11:03
  • It's still there in my Firefox 47.0. If it's not in yours, go back to about:config, then right-click and select New -> String and enter plugins.enumerable_names for the name and leave the value blank. You may need to restart Firefox. Then go to one of those fingerprinting test sites and check your results (ideally before and after).
    – pbarney
    Aug 9, 2016 at 12:37
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There isn't a way to do this yet in firefox. This is necessary so that the server you are connecting to can know what form to send the content back to you in. The closest analogy I can draw is how SSL sends all of the acceptable connection types (SSL1, TSL, etc.) and the server can pick what it wants to use to communicate. When we are sending all this information to the server we are letting it know that we have these plugins and it can send us content we will be able to use.

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  • Yet? Is it being planned? I realize the point, but again, most plugins don't need to be seen. For example, the Foxit Reader plugin. Foxit is an alternative for viewing .PDF documents. Nobody needs to know what I'm using to view .PDF files. I disabled the plugin, and when I opened the next .PDF Firefox asked me what to do, I said "remember," and it uses Foxit without people knowing. But some plugins you need, and the other end doesn't need to know the details.
    – Carl
    May 1, 2010 at 15:02
  • I don't know of any plans to add this functionality. Overall it isn't to much of a concern. Ther are so many bigger attacks which can be levied against a browser for disclosure of information such as the CSS visited link attack which can find out your browsing history, and a number of others. This really is relatively minor and is necessary for the way the web works. I really wouldn't be that concerned about it. If you are I suggest using a proxy server (CGIirc like)
    – Daisetsu
    May 1, 2010 at 17:26
  • I found the above centralops site wouldn't tell me what Firefox was running until I allowed it in NoScript.
    – Umber Ferrule
    Aug 2, 2010 at 22:50

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