Do I need AntiVirus in Linux?

[GreyGeek]

Short Answer: Get rid of FlashPlayer, and set your browser agent to mimic an Android phone so HTML5 video will be sent instead of FlashPlayer.

[woodsmoke]

He did not actually address the user agent switcher thing.

The user agent switcher is in addons, but it needs an xml file to find a user agent that one might actually use:

First you have to manually add the toolbar icon. Then, for complete functionality, you will need to download and import the XML file from http://techpatterns.com/forums/about304.html (the default user-agent settings are pretty worthless).

Every time you restart Firefox the User-Agent is reset which is a shame. I needed this to view mobile-only games on my desktop. For that it works just great. 4/5 for functionality and would have been 5/5 if not for the above.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...views/?src=api

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...her/developers

as to Flash control, I added on...umm Flash control. lol

When it is all working if one blocks HTML5 video and audio then all one will see is a black item with the flash symbol on it. If one click that then one will alllow flash to work and the flash will play.

If one does not block HTML5 video / audio then one will see the HTML5.

CURIOUSLY I did not find flash on my latest firefox, 46.0

lol

Hey thanks greymeister!

woodsmoke

[dequire]

I would also highly recommend installing "Privacy Badger" - the extension from the EFF - to make sure your browsing stays safe and checked. Easy, 1-click turn off if it gets a bit over-zealous (not a bad thing!). I honestly don't know why it doesn't get more press, as it really is a great privacy tool.
Homepage

Why it's different from Ad-block, etc., according to them:

Privacy Badger was born out of our desire to be able to recommend a single extension that would automatically analyze and block any tracker or ad that violated the principle of user consent; which could function well without any settings, knowledge, or configuration by the user; which is produced by an organization that is unambiguously working for its users rather than for advertisers; and which uses algorithmic methods to decide what is and isn't tracking. Although we like Disconnect, Adblock Plus, Ghostery and similar products (in fact Privacy Badger is based on the ABP code!), none of them are exactly what we were looking for. In our testing, all of them required some custom configuration to block non-consensual trackers. Several of these extensions have business models that we weren't entirely comfortable with. And EFF hopes that by developing rigorous algorithmic and policy methods for detecting and preventing non-consensual tracking, we'll produce a codebase that could in fact be adopted by those other extensions, or by mainstream browsers, to give users maximal control over who does and doesn't get to know what they do online.

[GreyGeek]

He did not actually address the user agent switcher thing.

The user agent switcher is in addons, but it needs an xml file to find a user agent that one might actually use:

.....
woodsmoke

I did not find that to be the case with "User-agent Switcher". It keeps my setting and comes with a bunch of preconfigured agents which you can graphically select:

That graphic is from my FireFox browser, which now claims to be running Google Chrom on Chromium OS, which forces sites to send HTML5 video instead of FlashPlayer stuff.

[elijathegold]

If you must have Flash for whatever reason, you can run the following commands to prevent it remembering you and storing flash cookies. On the down side these commands will also prevent sites from saving flash settings for you.

From your home directory

mv .macromedia saved-macromedia
ln -s /dev/null .macromedia

Once you are happy with it, simply delete the saved-macromedia directory.

[woodsmoke]

GG that is not my version of the switcher, dunno why they are different but...

woodsmoke