Ubuntu basic privacy



Disable the Amazon / shopping suggestions

It's very annoying that there is an Amazon button in Ubuntu taking up space and wasting time everytime the mouse hovers over it.

To disable all the e-commerce distractions you can do this on the commandline

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Lenses disabled-scopes "['more_suggestions-amazon.scope', 'more_suggestions-u1ms.scope', 'more_suggestions-populartracks.scope', 'music-musicstore.scope', 'more_suggestions-ebay.scope', 'more_suggestions-ubuntushop.scope', 'more_suggestions-skimlinks.scope']"

Disable the online search results

To avoid that Ubuntu sends your searches to Canonical switch this option OFF.

enter image description here

Install Synaptic

From the commandline:

sudo apt-get install synaptic

Activate the firewall

When you prefer to have a GUI:

sudo apt-get install gufw

Then you have access to the firewall and you can configure it to your needs.
You might need to log out and back in again to make active.

http://gufw.org/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gufw

Prevent FireFox from giving away your privacy

HTTPS Everywhere logo.png

Install the HTTPS-everywhere ADD-ON: https://www.eff.org/HTTPS-everywhere

source: https://github.com/EFForg/https-everywhere



http://img.crx4chrome.com/8d/c8/68/jeoacafpbcihiomhlakheieifhpjdfeo-logo.png

Install the Disconnect.me ADD-ON: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/disconnect/




Eventually install the no-script ADD-ON: https://noscript.net/



Track the trackers and visualise them with the LightBeam ADD-ON: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/

source: https://github.com/mozilla/lightbeam

File:Screengrab of Mozilla's 'Lightbeam' (addon for FireFox) on 141127 showing 100 trackers on the 'abovetopsecret' website.png

LightBeam does somewhat the same as Disconnect.me, but it has a nice visualisation of the sites that have been tracking you and how they are linked to the sites that you have visited.