Install a user agent switcher on Firefox
In this guide, you'll learn how to periodically change your browser's user agent and make it harder for trackers to fingerprint you.
When you access a website, your browser sends a string called the User Agent containing your browser's name, operating system, and other technical metadata of your device. Unfortunately, this metadata is often abused by trackers to build a fingerprint of your system and uniquely identify you throughout the web. To limit the efficiency of fingerprinting you can install a random agent switcher which periodically changes your browser's user agent, making it harder to uniquely identify you.
Random User Agent is an open source add-on that allows you to do this.
Note: There are likely other add-ons or apps available and you can test alternatives. At PI we believe add-ons/apps should be open source as they can be audited. By using an independent, open-source and unencumbered/free add-on/app, you are more likely to avoid products with conflicts of interest, spyware, data-leakage, or blockers with “acceptable ads” programs. Here we show the set-up and settings of one such add-on/app that we’ve used at PI; others are likely similar with varying levels of configurability.
Warning: Using an agent switcher may cause some pages to display incorrectly or not at all. To prevent this behaviour, we show how to disable the extension in such cases.
Installation
Like any other add-on, install Random User Agent by visiting the [Mozilla Firefox Add-ons page][1] and clicking Add to Firefox (Fig. 1) and then clicking on Add when prompted (Fig. 2).
Upon successful installation a notification appears on the top-right corner, and the Random User Agent icon is added to your toolbar (Fig. 3).
To check Random User Agent is enabled at any one time and visualise what User Agent is currently being shared with websites, click the icon (Fig. 4). If you stumble on a page which breaks when you have Random User Agent enabled, you can either disable it for that domain, clicking on Enabled on this domain, or pause the switcher temporarily, clicking on Pause Switcher.
Random User Agent is configured by default to change the user agent every 10 minutes, although you can configure this in the settings (Fig. 5).
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