Browser Security – Home Page vs Search Provider vs Bookmark

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Question comes to mind when utilizing a Browser and what it is doing with different requests.

Lets say utilizing Firefox, have Home Page set to Google.com, Search Engine set to DuckDuckGo.com, and then have various saved Bookmarks.

Upon opening Firefox,  it goes directly to the Google on Home page – has it sent anything to Google to snoop on?

Then perform a Search which utilizes DuckDuckGo which then delivers the selected website – has anything been sent to Google?

Then back at Home Page, select a stored Bookmark – is Google or DuckDuckGo been utilized or sent anything?

Finally, when on a website and select a link or a different Bookmark – is Google or DuckDuckGo been utilized?  How can you tell?

 

Windows 10 Pro x64 v22H2 and Windows 7 Pro SP1 x64 (RIP)

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I’ve set my homepage to about:addons in firefox, that way, I can search for updates to extensions immediately on connection then search using my preferred default search engine duck duck-go and change engine via bookmarks should I need to. Reason being, updating extensions is more important than search engine speculation and paranoia. Although having typed that, Google is nowhere on my systems LOL

Keeping IT Lean, Clean and Mean!

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Tex265 wrote:

Upon opening Firefox,  it goes directly to the Google on Home page – has it sent anything to Google to snoop on?

Yes, it does send data about your PC, browser, location…

The same data (and more) is sent to DuckDuckGo and to every site you visit

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My home page is set to about:blank on all my browsers (don’t need nor want a home page that immediately starts tracking me when I crank it up!)

I switched my search engine to DuckDuckGo a few months ago because Google started always showing a set of “large buttons” on the first page for my queries representing different types of results it thought I might be interested in instead of showing the results of my actually query.

Don’t really worry about my bookmarks as, unless I actually click one, there’s no possibility of tracking me.

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WCHS

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I use Session Manager to restore last session or alternatively go to a past session.

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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