Updated: 2017-08-10 NO LONGER MAINTAINED

These are some addons I recommend for use in Firefox to make your browsing more secure and privacy-focused. The addons link titles that are in bold are what I consider to be "must-haves" and the ones without bolded title links should be considered optional.

The "easiness" ranking ranks the extensions on how "easy" it is to install and set up. It starts at 5 being the most easy and then decreases down to 1 in "easiness". 5 means you can use the addon without any configuring (it "just works" out of the box). 4 may require some configuring to enable some main features. 3 requires several options changed to utilize its features. 2 requires some technical knowledge on what the addon actually does and what implications come from changing various settings, these kind of addons might take some set up. 1 would take considerable knowledge on what a web browser does when a website is loaded in order to configure this type of addon.

Also if you are not very technically inclined you should be safe installing addons 4 and up without too much trouble.

• HTTPS Everywhere
  • Links: Chrome, Firefox
  • Makes many popular sites accessible only via HTTPS, thereby encrypting your traffic.
  • Made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
  • easy: 5
• NoScript Security Suite
  • Blocks javascript, cross-site scripting attacks, and protect yourself against clickjacking attacks.
  • Very powerful and robust but can break lots of websites if you set too strict settings.
  • easy: 2
• uBlock Origin
  • Links: Chrome, Firefox
  • This is by far the best adblocker that exists for either Chrome or Firefox.
  • If you are using this on Chrome, also install: uBlock Origin Extra
  • easy: 5

• browser.urlbar.trimURLs -- change to false

This will show "http://" when you visit sites. This became a default a few Firefox versions ago (around Firefox 20-ish). I find it annoying you may enjoy it.

• browser.cache.disk.enable -- change to false
• browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl -- change to false
• browser.cache.memory.enable -- change to false
• browser.cache.offline.enable -- change to false
• network.http.use-cache -- change to false

• browser.sessionhistory.max_entries -- change to 2

More information about etag signatures, http://ochronus.com/tracking-without-cookies/

• extensions.update.enabled -- change to false

This is debatable whether it is a good idea or not. If you want to manually update addons on your own you can do this. However, if you want to automatically get new updates when they are available, then do not bother changing this setting.