[Whonix-devel] [tbb-dev] How to use Tor Browser for security not anonymity? How to use TBB using clearnet?

Mon Apr 10 11:47:00 CEST 2017

Patrick Schleizer:
> 1) How can one easily hack TBB to use clearnet? [1] (idea [2])

I believe all you need is:

    pref("network.proxy.type", 0);

and possibly disabling Torbutton (which is a good idea any way since it will only add confusion in that setup).

> 2) How can one enable cookies to persist in TBB?

IIRC all you need is to disable Private Browsing mode:

    pref("browser.privatebrowsing.autostart", false);

That has several other consequences, but at least some has individual prefs for toggling back to what the Private Browser mode does (I wouldn't be surprised if Tor Browser already change many of these prefs like that).

> 3) How can one re-enable the Firefox password manager in TBB so one can
> store passwords?

In addition to disabling Private Browsing mode you just have to enable the feature:

    pref("signon.rememberSignons", true);

> To archive that I've disabled private browser and tinkered with lots of
> torbutton Firefox config settings to no avail. Could you please kindly
> advice on how to archive that?

YMMV for the above prefs and their exact behavior, but I want to make a point that all you ask for can be achieved by setting a few prefs, so it's only a matter of providing a profile with the necessary different defaults. I don't think introducing more environment variables, like you suggest in [2], is an improvement over this.

For the record, providing a different "clearnet" profile for Tor Browser is how we implement Tails' Unsafe Browser.

Cheers!