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Hello. I installed Linux Mint on a new desktop that I built about a week ago, and I'm starting to get used to it, so it's probably time to start using it for some actual life things.

A couple of these do involve talking with family members all in Facebook Messenger, as well as the necessity of using Google Workspace for some work-related functions.

I'm aware that using both of these is a compromise of privacy in and of itself, but I'm still interested in mitigating the damages best as I can.

What steps can I take to make the usage of these as private and non-invasive as possible? If it helps at all, the browser I'm using is Firefox and the operating system is Linux Mint.

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[-] PiraHxCx@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I think that primarily third-party cookies are the most problematic thing when browsing the web, they use that crap to track you across sites and use it for ad targeting and "dynamic pricing". Yeah, uBlock Origin will deal with most of it, but Google/Amazon/Meta/X are very aggressive, so I’d consider using different browsers for different activities, and having a more secure browser if you are dealing directly with Facebook and Google accs, something like Mullvad if you can get used to the default screen letterboxing. This, with the cookie purging, will help you avoid theirs and others' cross-site tracking - just remember that not saving cookies means you are going to unlog from the sites every time you close the browser.
My main browser for daily, relaxed stuff is LibreWolf. I set cookie exceptions for sites I want to stay logged (like Lemmy). Some stuff doesn’t work correctly on LibreWolf because of some stuff it purged from FireFox, so you can go and do some manual configuration to harden regular Firefox and use for streaming and such, can also use it with Chameleon addon to give you a different signature from when you are using the other browsers. You can also change your VPN location when you are using each browser, so one more thing to make you look like a different user for each and make it less likely to have your different activities linked together.
If you are more tech-savvy, try ungoogled-chromium, but it requires a lot of manual setup.

this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
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