How to turn off top sites in Firefox for Android so my browsing history isn't leaked
I have seen many messages on this topic saying that this can't be done going back years, but nobody with the power to fix this seems to have taken any notice and done anything about it.
I use my tablet for both personal and business browsing and I simply cannot have my personal browsing habits being displayed to my business clients every time I open a new tab. Furthermore, if I use my tablet to purchases a gift for somebody, the last thing I want is for a link to that gift to start randomly popping up in new tabs the next time I use my tablet in front of the person for whom that gift was purchased. This is just nor acceptable!
All I want is for the "browser.newtab.url" preference to be implemented in Firefox for Android so that I can use it without having my private browsing history leaked to anybody who might be watching (especially if I'm giving a presentation in a conference room!). Is this so much to ask? I use Firefox as my default desktop browser and would like to use it on my tablet, but this issue has prevented me from doing so. Since I am not prepared to have privacy leaking software installed on my tablet, having established that this is still a problem, I have, very reluctantly, been forced to remove Firefox from my tablet again.
Please Please Please fix this, this is a critical privacy issue that really matters to me and I suspect many other.
Note: Constantly clearing browser history or using private browsing for everything is not a solution to this. The solution is to have a blank page as the default for a new tab.
All Replies (6)
Also, one further business reason why I need to be able to turn this off. I work with multiple clients in my business, I do not want to have links which relate to work which I was doing for one client popping up in front of another in an uncontrolled manner.
Hi
One thing you may want to try is to "pin" a number of "middle ground" websites to that page - such as general news, weather, sports or business news websites.
Similar to that would be to pin the default Mozilla sites to that page (and fill any gaps with some generic sites as above).
I hope this helps and provides an option for you.
Hi tim_mw
Like Seburo (thanks S!) I don't have a simple solution, sorry.
Perhaps automatically clearing browser history on quit [1] AND hiding all the panels on your home screen [2] will help.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/clear-your-browsing-history-and-other-personal-dat
Cheers!
...Roland
tim_mw said
Also, one further business reason why I need to be able to turn this off. I work with multiple clients in my business, I do not want to have links which relate to work which I was doing for one client popping up in front of another in an uncontrolled manner.
Thanks for the answer.
I tried doing this by pinning "about:blank" in every box. Unfortunately this doesn't stop the leak, Firefox just shows my browser history as a list below the boxes instead.
Roland Tanglao said
Hi tim_mw Like Seburo (thanks S!) I don't have a simple solution, sorry. Perhaps automatically clearing browser history on quit [1] AND hiding all the panels on your home screen [2] will help. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/clear-your-browsing-history-and-other-personal-dat [2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-awesome-screen-search-web-bookmarks-and-more#w_rearrange-hide-or-set-a-default-panel Cheers! ...Roland
Hi Roland, yes hiding all the panels does cause Firefox to use a blank start page, which is what I need, thank you. This also frees up the screen real estate which was wasted by those buttons at the top of each tab. Now I need to find an addon which can give me a bookmarks and history link on the normal menu, since those links aren't duplicated there and I do still need to be able to get at them when I'm not using my tablet in front of a client.
Hi tim_mw
Glad I was able to help a wee bit. Unfortunately I don't know of an add-on "which can give me a bookmarks and history link on the normal menu, since those links aren't duplicated there and I do still need to be able to get at them when I'm not using my tablet in front of a client."
Anybody know of such an add-on? Please help tim_mw by replying here.
Cheers!
..Roland