from Hacker News

Facebook Container for Firefox

by sushicalculus on 10/21/20, 4:35 PM with 425 comments

• by mmcclure on 10/21/20, 5:16 PM

  I use Firefox multi-account containers[1] extensively, it's honestly the primary reason I use Firefox these days. The big win for me is that I _hate_ having to use the Google account switcher, so I basically set up a container for each Gmail account (work, personal, old email, etc).

  The nice bonus feature is you can have certain sites default to containers. I had a paid YouTube account for a while, for example, so having any YouTube link open in my personal account was nice for not getting hit with ads on initial click due to my default Gmail not being the right one.

  There's also a plugin[2] that will make any new tab default to whatever the first tab listed is. Really great for if you want to have a whole browser window dedicated to one container.

  [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

  [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window...

• by oldandboring on 10/21/20, 5:19 PM

  I use the 'Containerise' plugin along with the following configuration (which I am constantly tweaking) to keep the big tech companies isolated from each other and the rest of the web.

  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containerise/

  I'm also increasingly using it to keep their various properties isolated from each other (eg. keeping Bing separate from the rest of Microsoft) to reduce tracking even further.

    !*.atlassian.net , Atlassian
    !*.bing.com , Microsoft Bing
    !*.bitbucket.org , Atlassian
    !*.github.com , Github
    !*.google.com , Google
    !*.imdb.com , Amazon Home/Personal
    !*.linkedin.com , Microsoft LinkedIn
    !*.live.com , Microsoft
    !*.microsoft.com , Microsoft
    !*.nytimes.com , New York Times
    !*.reddit.com , Reddit
    !*.twitter.com , Twitter
    !*.youtube.com , Google
    amazon.com , Amazon Home/Personal
    console.aws.amazon.com , Amazon AWS
    music.amazon.com , Amazon Home/Personal
    news.ycombinator.com , Hacker News
    smile.amazon.com , Amazon Home/Personal
    www.amazon.com , Amazon Home/Personal
  

  You get the idea. Really powerful.

• by axismundi on 10/21/20, 10:09 PM

  How bizarre that I desperately try to contain these monsters in digital cages, keeping them on a VPN leash, carefully adding plugins, trying to maintain delicate balance. Sometimes I try too hard, the monsters are offended, throw errors, hide the contents away. Sometimes I miss something, and they devour my privacy bit by bit, unnoticed. I spend sleepless nights scouring the internet for new codes, secret browser options, complex combinations of obscure settings.

  And when I finally fall asleep, I dream of internet without the monsters.

• by JadoJodo on 10/21/20, 5:05 PM

  A few others:

  - Temporary Containers[0]

  - Google Container[1]

  - Google Container w/ Integrations (YouTube, AdTech, Apps, etc)[2]

  - Reddit Container[3]

  There are a few others[4] as well, but I've found the Temporary Containers solves the 80%.

  --

  [0] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

  [1] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...

  [2] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...

  [3] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/contain-reddi...

  [4] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=Container

• by dotancohen on 10/21/20, 8:19 PM

  I am hard pressed to think of any other website in the 25 year history of the WWW that was so abusive of its users that web browsers had to start inventing features to protect user from it.

• by cooljacob204 on 10/21/20, 4:44 PM

  I'm finding more and more that it might finally be time to switch back to Firefox.

  Is Google still planning to destroy adblock with Manifest V3?

• by krullix on 10/21/20, 5:00 PM

  I love this Facebook container. Love to see the Facebook container mark also on other websites trying to track me.

  I also use the Firefox multi-account containers to set a temporary container for every new tab. To not lose logins etc I'm websites I visit frequently, I set up dedicated containers for those. Work very well.

  Anyone else with experience of the Firefox multi-account container extension?

• by 0-_-0 on 10/21/20, 6:52 PM

  To do this for all sites you can enable First Party Isolation if Firefox by toggling privacy.firstparty.isolate in about:config, or have a UI button that toggles is through an addon [1]. I've been using it for years and it only seems to break some payment processors, and only rarely.

  [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/first-party-i...

• by marketingtech on 10/21/20, 5:17 PM

  This is definitely convenient for now, but the shifting browser ecosystem (along with default security changes in Safari and proposed changes in Chrome) is driving the development and adoption of server-side tracking solutions. This is great for the short-term, but I imagine it won't be relevant much longer.

  There's a reason why Segment just sold for $3.2 billion... [edited to add: They offer a single integration point and will proxy your data server-side to hundreds of other companies.]

• by jmnicolas on 10/21/20, 6:28 PM

  Browser finger printing will defeat this. I wonder how prevalent it is.

  Most of the sites I visit seem not to recognize me without cookies but I always wonder if it's just a "ploy" to make me feel untracked.

  While I'm at it, anyone has good resources on how not to be finger printed (without going full Tor browser)? Do I have to disable Javascript?

• by richy_ on 10/22/20, 3:47 AM

  Facebook provides a way for advertisers to pass back non-deterimnistic and PII signals to match users offsite of Facebook. ie. without cookies, server-to-server https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/conversio...

• by one2know on 10/21/20, 8:20 PM

  How does this stop facebook from tracking you? I'm fairly certain that on facebook, google, everyone, etc tracking is largely through processing request logs to gstatic.com or fbcdn.net for example with a referrer header saying what site you are visiting, your source IP and various other things to fingerprint the request.

• by jedberg on 10/21/20, 6:56 PM

  I've been using containers on Firefox for a long time now. And I love it.

  But my biggest issue is Firefox performance on MacOS. The only reason it's not my primary browser is because Safari is just so much better.

  What I wonder is, is this just me, or does everyone have this problem?

• by phatbyte on 10/22/20, 3:41 PM

  While I appreciate this kind of solutions, in my brain all I can think is: what the hell is wrong with the web today?

  I mean, what did we do to ourselves? How the hell did we ruin the web experience this much?

  Looking back in the 90s, the web wasn't the most pretty thing but how simple it was. You went to a news website and that was it. Click, read, the end.

  These days however:

  - Go to a news/content website

  - wait for the 40MB of useless CSS and JS "minified" crap to download.

  - Agree with 2 or 3 huge popups to allow collect your data

  - Get a new popup to make you disable your ad-blocker plugin. And if you disable it, you need to refresh the page all over again.

  - Get a "subscribe to our newsletter" popup

  - Get tracked by amazons, facebooks, etc...

  - And once you finally click on an article.... get another popup to subscribe to their premium paid content...

  Seriously, we broke the web, and now we are trying to fix it with putting more plugins and tools on top of this problem. I just feel the web is fighting against us and our browsers, and in the end everyone will loose.

• by megous on 10/22/20, 1:38 AM

  I tried containers for a while, but I didn't really trust the separation, and I also wanted the browser to be separated from my regular homedir/user.

  So now I have a script to create/remove new UNIX users with a pre-configured firefox profile and a script to run the firefox under that user.

  It has some quirks, but also some benefits. Mainly that the browser doesn't have access to all files on my computer, and the separation between profiles is enforced by the OS, which I trust more.

• by StavrosK on 10/21/20, 4:52 PM

  I'm loving Firefox Containers for various use cases, but is running Google/Facebook in them worth the extra hassle if you use uBO/Privacy Badger? It blocks all that stuff anyway.

• by almog on 10/22/20, 8:07 AM

  I have a use case where I'm using 6 different amazon accounts which I'd have loved to use with containers controlled by bookmarks (I use Firefox keyword bookmarks a lot for productivity).

  The best out of the box way you could do it with Firefox is to setup different profiles and switch between them, however, while there is a many-to-many relationship between website and containers, there is none between bookmarks and containers, thus you'd have to manually switch to the right container.

  My workaround for this was to setup a thin server that redirects amazon<\d+>.localhost to amazon.com. Then, on Firefox, I bind each amazon(1-6).localhost to its own container and configure it to always open this site in its container. Now every time I type "amazon2" it will open up amazon.com in its right container.

  Would have wished to have bookmarks granularity as part of Firefox, but for my use case, this is the best I could come up with in few minutes of work.

• by JohnBooty on 10/21/20, 6:29 PM

  I absolutely love the containers feature in general, and the Facebook one in particular.

  One severe use case limitation (for me) involves using containers to separate work/home accounts. I am a developer, so I do a lot of screen sharing / presenting.

  Theoretically, I could use Firefox containers to separate things into "work" and "personal."

  However, all containers have a shared autocomplete history for the URL bar.

  1. Suppose I visit "GirlsXXX.com" in my "Personal" container 2. The next day at work, I am screen-sharing and using my "Work" container 3. I type in "github.com" so that I can visit Github.com 4. As I type "g-i-t-h-u-b", "GirlsXXX.com" will be one of the autocomplete suggestions after I've types "g" and "gi"

• by residentfoam on 10/21/20, 4:54 PM

  Looking forward to a Google Container

• by fractalf on 10/21/20, 5:19 PM

  I solved this another way. Last week I #deletefacebook :) ..so long and thanks for all the fish

• by ajvs on 10/21/20, 5:25 PM

  If you enable the First-Party Isolation preference in about:config then this is more effective site isolation and is automatic for all sites.

• by welder on 10/21/20, 5:12 PM

  I already do this manually using Profiles/People in Chrome. Containers look much better and more seamless though.

  I wonder, does this fix the Google reCAPTCHA problem with using multiple browser profiles?

• by Filligree on 10/21/20, 5:48 PM

  I tried creating an account this way, but it promptly got banned, with no ability to appeal.

  I guess they don't want my business. Good thing I gave it a few days before connecting the Quest.

• by iamAtom on 10/21/20, 6:11 PM

  I wish we have the same for Android apps as well. I don't want random Apps to have full access to my storage instead it can have it's own space.

• by jb775 on 10/22/20, 2:43 AM

  Is there anything like this to stop (or minimize) Amazon from increasing prices based on the max they think I'll pay?

  I just got an alert saying my recent Amazon purchase "May have been lost in transit". I went to place a duplicate order only to find each product's price ~15% higher than when I placed my original order. Such a dirtbag pricing strategy....they should call it the monopoly algorithm

• by pkage on 10/21/20, 5:05 PM

  Anyone know if there's an integration with Tree Style Tabs[0]? They're a gamechanger for browsing the web, and it'd be nice to see what tabs are contained.

  [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

• by leandron on 10/21/20, 5:51 PM

  Is this possible to request data facebook (potentially) have on you, even if you don't have an account? (I deleted mine about 5 years ago...)

  Answering my own question: Yes you can -> https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/2032834846972583

• by moallabbad on 10/21/20, 7:10 PM

  Speaking of Firefox containers, I created an extension that adds an extra layer of convenience. The extension lets you create a default page for each container; something like a homepage for each container. It’s called‘Container Default Pages’ [0]

  One thing the Multi-Account-Container does is allow you to redirect a website to open in a specific container. My extension gives the extra feature of assigning the container itself to a default website.

  The main use case is when you have a container dedicated to say, YouTube, it makes sense that when you open a new tab in your ‘YouTube Container’ it should go directly to YouTube. Of course you can open other things but the extension provides a convenient default behavior.

  [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-def...

• by dudus on 10/22/20, 3:09 PM

  Since this is the major advantage and draw of using firefox this should be default and not an extension

• by mrbonner on 10/21/20, 6:02 PM

  I recently switched to Edge on my iphone because it has adblock by default. Firefox doesn't have the adblocking ability. Then, I switched to Edge on my MacOS as well because I want to maintain my bookmarks sync between the 2 devices.

  I would definitely go back to Firefox if it has adblock in iOS.

• by 0x416c6578 on 10/21/20, 8:58 PM

  I use ungoogled chromium but I have a script that completely replaces my .config/chromium/ directory with a clean version saved with no cookies/history or anything else saved. that means I can basically roll back any stuff that I do. to update the config (eg for bookmark adding) I just replace the stored clean version with a new clean version created. I have my workflow integrated with starting on the internet with a "clean slate". yes things take a bit longer being signed out but using a password manager mitigates this somewhat. I have never had a problem with resetting my config and have been using the design for at least 2 years worth of chrome updates (with a few " resets" of my safe config)

• by iamdamian on 10/21/20, 5:20 PM

  I love the general idea behind the container (sandboxed browsing). However, I'm not clear on the exact privacy benefit relative to the much easier path of blocking 3rd party cookies in your browser of choice and installing uBlock Origin. What specific tracking is no longer possible using containers that is currently possible if you're using one or both of those protections?

  Is it something about 3rd party scripts that uBlock Origin doesn't block by default and that don't require 3rd party cookies?

  I'm not looking for a general answer about containment or sandboxing or a nice user experience for separating environments or profiles; I'm looking for a precise attack/tracking vector that makes this worth switching browsers for.

• by aeturnum on 10/21/20, 8:27 PM

  Just FYI, I installed this and immediately got trapped in a login loop in Facebook.

  I got logged out of Facebook after installing it (either by the extension or by FB) and then when I log back in FB asks me to "complete the following steps to regain access to your account" with a button that brings me to an error page. They also mention that this behavior was triggered by me having 2FA enabled on my Facebook account.

  So I'm interested but beware right now (especially 2FA people).

  Edit: Concerningly, the FB error page still has a 2019 copyright ^_^;

  Edit 2: This was resolved by using the FB app to verify logins and restored my access in firefox.

• by ekianjo on 10/22/20, 3:55 AM

  > puts people over profit to give everyone more power online.

  The elephant in the room is the default Google integration in Firefox, I guess? They don't speak too much about that kind of tracking.

• by crazygringo on 10/21/20, 11:25 PM

  I'm confused here about two things, and can't find any answers in the comments.

  1) How is this different from a regular Firefox container you use for Facebook?

  2) Firefox containers are essentially the same as Chrome profiles, right?

  I'm just trying to figure out what benefit this has over someone keeping Facebook inside a separate profile in Chrome. If Mozilla's trying to attract people from Chrome... I feel like they need to be a bit clearer on what precisely Mozilla provides that Chrome doesn't?

• by aarchi on 10/22/20, 5:44 PM

  The feature that has kept me from switching to Firefox is history archiving. I like to keep a record of my browsing history using Chromium's “History Trends Unlimited” extension to easily find articles previously read. However, Firefox appears to only record the most recent site access date and there's no similar extension. Does anyone know of an alternative?

• by bradgessler on 10/21/20, 7:30 PM

  Safari has this figured out from a UX point-of-view with their concept of “website settings”. I wish other browsers would steal this idea and run with it because “containers” and “switching profiles” doesn’t mean much to users or isn’t the best experience.

  If you haven’t in a while, go check out “Settings for websites” on Safari desktop and mobile. It’s some pretty sane and reasonable stuff.

• by wodenokoto on 10/21/20, 5:14 PM

  What’s the way to set this up for custom domains? I basically only want to be logged into my mail, Facebook HN and twitch (and they don’t need to share tracking cookies) and have everything else happen in a no-cookies stored environment.

  But do I need a container extension for each of those sites or what is the deal here? And do I exit the container when I click a link to another domain?

• by sdwolfz on 10/21/20, 5:45 PM

  I've been using Multi Account Containers for a while now (years probably) and they do provide good value but things can still be improved. What I think Firefox lacks right now is good UX around switching profiles. Sure `about:profiles` works, but it's hard to access, looks ugly, and prone to miss-clicking.

  Here is my workflow:

  - Normal browsing: not logged in, no containers.

  - YouTube: have an "Entertainment" container for it and use it logged out since Google signs you on all their property, and I don't want to mix my entertainment history with my educational history.

  - Social media: have a "Social" container where I access all the data harvesters.

  - Logged in: For anything that I need to be signed up, a "Personal" container, so I can check my email in peace.

  - Work: here's the catch, this needs it's own profile. Since "YouTube" is set to always open in the "Entertainment" account, and I don't want work related videos pop up when relaxing, and vice-versa, I can switch profiles and have everything completely isolated in my "Work" profile. And in case I need to, I can set up more containers in this profile. Also there are different add-ons I need for my own setup compared to work, or the same add-on with different configuration. So just containers won't do here.

  My point is, if Firefox had a profile switcher as easy to use as Chromium had, my life would be way better. Profiles and Containers seem to complement each other. They just need a truckload of polish.

  Some things that annoy me right now:

  - There is no dedicated UI for profile CRUD. And an add-on won't work for this since it needs to be available and enabled by default across profiles.

  - "Reopen in container" opens a new tab instead of replacing the current.

  - Having keybindings for the two above would be extremely useful.

  - For some reason, Firefox lacks the functionality to change the ordering of stuff (in general, but more specifically profiles and containers). The creation order is all you get.

  - A quick way to do "clear cookies/data in this container only" so I don't need to delete/recreate the container and mess up my ordering (which I can not change). Also clear data for non container use without clearing data in containers. Basically treating non container use as a "Default" container.

  - All of the above I wish came by default with Firefox and not from an add-on. My honest opinion is that they are crucial functionality and deserve to be made aesthetically pleasing and available for everyone to use.

• by super_seomis on 10/21/20, 11:04 PM

  The ability to use plugins easily on mobile phone. That's why I choose firefox

• by trey-jones on 10/21/20, 6:25 PM

  On the one hand, I've been using Facebook exclusively in Incognito/Private mode for years. On the other hand, I haven't logged into Facebook for months. Maybe just because of the upcoming election though.

• by qwerty456127 on 10/21/20, 7:11 PM

  Why do we need it, given we already have containers built-in (I mean in Firefox)?

• by DaniloDias on 10/21/20, 9:46 PM

  Tools like this are useful for those suffering from Facebook Stockholm syndrome.

• by nuggien on 10/21/20, 5:49 PM

  I've been using this, but it seems to break any sites that use facebook login, so it's pretty annoying to have to disable the extension whenever I need to login to a site that only has facebook login.

• by ralphc on 10/21/20, 5:23 PM

  Other than convenience, what, if anything, do containers have over doing what I do - always opening a private window/incognito in Chrome, go to facebook and log in?

• by greyhair on 10/22/20, 12:57 PM

  Isn't this old news? I was using Firefox Facebook container for quite some time before I closed out my Facebook account, and that was some time ago.

  It is a great feature.

• by dheera on 10/21/20, 9:47 PM

  Why stop at just Facebook? What about Google, Doubleclick, Disqus, Google Analytics, Twitter and all the others that have embedded widgets all over the web?

• by Theizestooke on 10/22/20, 12:36 PM

  Is it possible to set privacy settings per container (keep cookies or not, delete history), or is that still a universal switch for every tab?

• by helsinkiandrew on 10/21/20, 5:11 PM

  Presumably if Facebook really wanted to track you they could associate requests from the same IP and request signature (user-agent/accepts etc)

• by srathi on 10/21/20, 9:39 PM

  Do the containers and their settings sync across devices as part of Firefox Sync? Last time I tried them, I had to recreate them on each device.

• by INTPenis on 10/21/20, 5:35 PM

  I love Firefox containers. Can also recommend cookie auto-delete. It's honestly not that bad if you whitelist sites you use a lot.

• by mmwelt on 10/22/20, 2:18 AM

  > "The Facebook Container Extension is currently only available for Firefox for Desktop."

  I hope this comes to Firefox for Android soon!

• by yona on 10/22/20, 1:22 AM

  I don’t use FB but I use the container feature; I keep streaming, social media, banking, separate, for example. And shopping.

• by johnchristopher on 10/22/20, 10:16 AM

  Be aware that using this container will prevent websites from displaying Instagram embedded content and things like that.

• by btbuildem on 10/21/20, 7:33 PM

  Nice. I use Firefox as my FB container (all the other web activity happens in Chrome). This is good to see.

• by jzer0cool on 10/21/20, 10:46 PM

  How does the container extension work? Is this just masking browser signatures or something else?

• by pabs3 on 10/22/20, 4:57 AM

  Would there be any downsides to Firefox putting every website in its own container by default?

• by cortesoft on 10/21/20, 5:22 PM

  If they have this ability, why doesn't every website get its own 'container tab'?

• by tibbydudeza on 10/21/20, 7:31 PM

  Just easier to stop using Facebook.

• by turkey99 on 10/21/20, 7:01 PM

  We shouldn’t need to engineer around this. The fact this is needed shows Facebook wrongdoing.

• by kevin_b_er on 10/21/20, 5:33 PM

  > The Facebook Container Extension is currently only available for Firefox for Desktop.

• by sbmthakur on 10/22/20, 4:32 AM

  Is there any way to stop recording browsing history for a particular container?

• by president on 10/21/20, 5:16 PM

  There are still other ways they can identify you based on typing and mouse movement patterns or other heuristics and fingerprinting techniques. Or they can purchase this information from one of the many 3rd party adtech companies that are also tracking and building shadow profiles on people.

• by nashashmi on 10/21/20, 11:28 PM

  I Wish sites could be opened in specific containers via bookmarks

• by smusamashah on 10/22/20, 3:24 PM

  Can it open facebook as an SSB (chrome like desktop app)?

• by luc_ on 10/21/20, 5:00 PM

  I've been using this for a while... would recommend!

• by fnord77 on 10/22/20, 1:54 AM

  the only reason I still use chrome is for my mac's fingerprint reader as 2FA for work systems.

  there's been a firefox ticket open for this for a while now.

• by grishka on 10/21/20, 5:59 PM

  Is there anything similar for Chromium-based browsers?

• by mcstafford on 10/22/20, 12:17 AM

  This is like finding a technique that will make it safer for your kids to play with the creepy neighbor.

  You may be better off not playing with the creepy neighbor.

• by tsjq on 10/22/20, 4:02 AM

  What is new? Why is this posted now?

• by m1117 on 10/22/20, 12:02 AM

  I proudly give them all my data, I want big tech to make money and get better products.

• by gitowiec on 10/22/20, 8:28 PM

  Only for desktop :(

• by hn3333 on 10/21/20, 8:50 PM

  Sorry but isn't this trivial to circumvent. Hire me Facebook. I'll get you the usual data back in a day or so.

  EDIT: I am confused why nobody sees the obvious.