Disable AMP in Firefox and Chrome with the Redirect AMP to HTML extension
For some, AMP is one of the worst things to happen to the internet. Google launched its cached lazy loading tech for the web about 2 years ago stating that AMP's intention was to make the Web faster. Opponents of AMP fear that Google is using AMP to get even more control of the Internet than it already has.
AMP is an open project but just like Chromium, it is heavily controlled by Google. More and more sites started to adopt AMP because it is beneficial when it comes to a site's representation in Google Search. Other search engines have started to display AMP links as well on mobile devices.
AMP was designed to make pages load faster on phones which are on mobile data networks by minimizing the amount of code that is used; a bare-bones version of the site is the result similar to sites that were processed with readability services but with ads and some other scripts supported.
While AMP works on mobile devices, there is an unfortunate side effect. Links which are AMP (accelerated mobile pages) enabled, open the mobile version of the page even when you access them on the computer. AMP links may be shared via email, chat and published on the Internet, and it will become more common that desktop users run into these links.
AMP pages look horrible on most computers especially if you have a large monitor. And you're visiting the version of the page that is hosted by Google not the publisher's website which is a privacy concern for some.
Sometimes media content (videos or images) may not load correctly. Need another reason? I have even seen some RSS Feeds use AMP links.
If you're familiar with SEO terms like responsive design, you should know that a website should scale correctly to the aspect ratio and resolution of the display that it is accessed from. A page's rank in Search may be influenced by this; if it does not display correctly on mobile devices or the desktop, its rank in the search engine may be impacted negatively by it.
Of course, Google never really played by its own rules when it comes to its own properties. Should not AMP pages redirect automatically to the "real" page when a user using a desktop device opens them?
Redirect AMP to HTML
Since this is not the case currently, it is necessary to fix this using third-party tools. Redirect AMP to HTML is an install-and-forget sort of add-on which un-AMPs pages to deliver the actual URL, i.e., the article hosted by the publisher website. It is a web-extension which works on PC and mobile (Firefox only as Chrome mobile does not support extensions) It is open source and the latest commit was made a few months ago.
The add-on is available for Firefox and Chrome.
Does the add-on work flawlessly?
It worked perfectly on the links I tried. I ran searches on my mobile device and shared the AMP links so that I could access them on the computer. You can share using email, instant messaging, or any other share option that gives you access on your computer.
Note: The add-on will create a Cloudflare cookie. This is an "opt-out" cookie that is used for websites which support the Cloudflare viewer. It tells the website not to load the page in AMP, even before the add-on comes into play.
Can't I just delete "amp" from the URL?
Sure that works, but not all websites use amp at the end of the URL like example.com/amp. Some websites use amp as a prefix instead of WWW (amp.example.com), others may have amp somewhere in the middle of the URL. It may take a few extra seconds to spot the amp tag, especially it is particularly lengthy.
There is currently no way to disable AMP completely using about:config in Firefox or other methods. It isn't a protocol that can be toggled, it's a framework that is implemented by webmasters on their websites. And like I explained above, each admin may implement it using a different method. Don't forget to check Martin's article about disabling AMP on mobile devices.
Google search results aren't the only way you will come across AMP links. Any shared link may be an AMP link; in fact, some links posted to sites like Reddit are AMP links. About 30-50% of the links I get from friends/work contacts are either mobile versions (for e.g. m.example.com) or AMP links (mostly news websites).
I believe that a lot of mobile apps that use Chrome's WebView component for their built-in browser use AMP as well. Telegram has its own Instant View which works better since it is restricted to the app. AMP on the other hand is independent and hence universal. Earlier this year, Google announced that it is testing AMP pages which are hosted on the publisher's domain. But this has been restricted to Chrome.
Hopefully one day we will be able to block AMP completely.
Firefox Containers are awesome.
I recommend using “Multi-Account Containers” in combination with “Temporary Containers” and “First Party Isolation”.
They are a hassle to setup at first but after that they are great.
To make it easier you should first enable “Multi-Account Containers” and save all your relevant Accounts in them. After that you can enable the other two.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/first-party-isolation/
What exactly is the difference between temporary containers and multi-account containers? I don’t see how they can be combined since they seem to achieve the same goal in the same way.
First party isolation is a preference that you can disable manually from about:config so you can save one addon installation. Considering that would already make your browser fingerprint more unique and easier to track, which is the whole point of going through this trouble, is a good idea to look to reduce the number of addons like this one.
Just my observation, not criticizing, thank you for sharing this!
@thebrowser, disabling first party isolation is stupid.
First party isolation protects your privacy.
Read about it here: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/22/how-to-enable-first-party-isolation-in-firefox/
BTW, privacy.firstparty.isolate = “true” is the default of the ghack user.js, so you don’t have to worry about leaving a unique “fingerprint”, you’ll have plenty of company (other user.js also borrow heavily from the ghack user.js).
Oops, I didn’t mean disable by toggle it, my bad. But still, what’s the difference between the first two addons? I’m really curious if there’s a benefit in using them separately.
“But still, what’s the difference between the first two addons?”
From what I understand, multi-account containers can provide permanent containers while temporary provides only temporary containers.
Tried and tested it. It just does not work as intended, it’s such a pain to use and configure. Plus it is of course not integrated so if, say, I want less fingerprints with, for instance, User Agent Switcher then I need to configure it for each container which, in the case of Temporary Containers, means every and each domain…
So, at the end, you will definitely be tracked as if you haven’t those extensions.
This concepts should be:
– builtin Firefox
– usable out-of-the-box with decent default values
– invisible to non tech users.
If not, then it just like recommanding Tor and NetBSD to grandma.
Good idea, but many years overdue for me, as I already use 3 different computers for different uses and each of those has at least 2 operating systems and a VM, and I use VPNs and clear/avoid all cookies and block trackers and ads, and I don’t share accounts between systems, and more… Also, I no longer use Firefox, but good info to know, thanks.
I’m giving you an A+ for this report.
@Mr. Hand: You go on great lengths to play Minecraft, I give you that.
@Anon
Well, whatever you gave me, it’s retarded blather.
I use ESET EIS Security Suite with a Banking & Payment Protection feature (Protection against KeyStroke Loggers) and the two don’t seem to mix. The Ext installs for regular FF use BUT (ie) Financial sites setup to open in a Green-bordered BPP Window don’t recognize the Containers Ext and an attempt to Install it netted Install failed-Ext appears to be corrupt.
I’m valuing Keystroke Logging over Privacy, so I uninstalled the Ext.
IF anyone knows how to marry the two, much appreciated by a Not-An-IT-Pro.
What about the tracking via Localstorage?
Not good.
Firefox is not supporting removing site localStorage per container – it means that you could remove all localStorage or nothing (for example removing youtube.com localStorage in “Default” container will also remove YouTube settings in “Google YouTube” container).
https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete/wiki/Documentation#enable-localstorage-support
Except the type of problems Danniello wrote about, the local storage is supposed to be separated by containers, like cookies, indexedDB, HTTP data cache, image cache, and any other areas supported by originAttributes, according to this source:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers#What_is_.28and_isn.27t.29_separated_between_Containers
History, bookmarks and Security Exceptions for Invalid TLS Certificates are not separated (yet).
Saved passwords, saved search and form data, HSTS flags and OCSP responses are not separated, on purpose.
I’ve tried it. It’s useless for me because the history is not isolated to each containers.
Why do you need history isolation? Web sites don’t have access to your history.
“Web sites don’t have access to your history.”
Actually, there used to be a hack whereby websites could sometimes infer your history regarding other sites you had previously visited. It was an evil derivation of innocent code that some web developers (including me) had implemented: custom CSS code to change the color or style of a visited link, in a different way from the default style that websites back then used for visited links.
Unfortunately for me, after I put a lot of work into my snazzy visited-links styling, the browsers all blocked such custom styling because of the evil tracking hacks (which didn’t even exist at the time I wrote my code). I (and other developers) were furious that the browser companies didn’t implement the fix in a more fine-grained way: they should have just blocked that kind of styling on links to _other websites_, but not to links on the same site, since the site owner can log what pages you visited on his own site anyway.
I’m not aware of any history-sniffing hacks since then, but I wouldn’t bet that it’s not possible in some other way.
@skierpage
read gerdneuman’s comment here
https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/47
That’s what profiles are for. Containers is about site isolation and for using multiple accounts / cookies of a site in the same profile.
@Ashwin, my reccommendation for your next article is DNS-over-HTTPS (Martin covered it, but he hasn’t used it & reported back about a longer-term user experience).
IMO, everyone on Firefox should be using it (Chrome promised a general roll-out of DNS-over-HTTPS, but it hasn’t happened due to “technical issues” according to Google).
You can add ESNI for even better results.
And use a VPN, although, a good VPN cost money every month (whereas, DNS-over-HTTPS is free on Firefox).
Thank you for the suggestion. I’ll add it to my list.
Can I have some containers with all/most addons disabled (i.e. as if they were in safe mode) and other containers with addons enabled?
I get the basics of conatiners but I don’t understand the difference between the containers that now come with Firefox, and the add-ons – why do I need the extension? Is it because I can “reopen in container” but need the add-on/extension to make sure that whenever I open a particular webpage it opens within the container?
Ah – yes – the add-on just does the job automatically each time.
A mix of uBlock and Firefox’s own tracking settings can block the vast majority of the tracking content that is fed to a page, which makes the use of containers a bit redundant unless you are looking to have multiple tabs open with different accounts logged into the same website (or service) – which I have no need for.
That said, I having nothing against the concept of containers, just feel they are something that might have been beneficial years ago rather than now.
What’s more, if you genuinely want to stop the tracking, you could just use a private browsers session.
I’m surprised that container tabs isn’t part of the default installation yet even in the latest FF version which is 81.0 at the time of writing.
I’m using Waterfox Classic which supports XUL/XCOM extensions and is probably regarded as old fashioned by some; yet container tabs are available in prefs without the need to install an addon. Here’s a pix.
https://i.postimg.cc/43zKXb8K/container-tabs.png
I love Firefox Containers. Started using them about a year ago. Then the screen on the laptop I set them all up on died. Setting up a new laptop now and found that they’re not carried over to a new computer, even with Sync enabled. Ugh. Revived the old laptop specifically for the purpose of figuring out how to move them over to a new computer. Haven’t figured it out yet. Beware of this limitation if you use them.