Running multiple Firefox profiles for security

When it comes to security, the more layers you can provide without over-complicating things, the better.

I like using Firefox to store passwords, and enjoy having a "locked-down" browser that let's nothing through for news story surfing, but then being able to fully navigate my financial institutes' webpages. Even better is doing all of this at one time. Firefox allows you to do all of this and more with multiple Profiles.

While Firefox allows you to create multiple Profiles, I believe the initial thought or reason for this was so that you could have multiple users sharing the same PC (and desktop login) but have their own set of Firefox bookmarks, stored passwords, etc.

I do use my profiles like that. For instance the PCs have a single logon for all of the kids, but then each kid has their own Profile, with stored passwords. When you first start Firefox, it asks which Profile to use, then once selected if you try to start Firefox up again it just uses the existing Profile in use. Since only one child is online at a time, this works out just fine.

However, the way I use Profiles is so that I can have one for my work/business uses. I have one Profile for my generic personal uses, one for my financial-only uses, one called "Temp" which has no popup/adblocking at all but stores nothing at all (no cookies, no cache, no anything) when closing and is only used if say my general personal browsing causes a website to fail to load.

With all but this "Temp" Profile, I use add-ons like AdBlock Plus, BetterPrivacy, NoScript, Ghostery, Targeted Advertizing Cookie Opt-Out (TACO) to attempt to keep my browser running quickly and with less glitches and more personal privacy. Sometimes these add-ons will break a site, even if I tell the add-ons to allow that site on a temporary basis. In those cases, if the situation warrants it, I'll fire up the "Temp" Profile and load the site, and then close the "Temp" Profile when done.

However, by default Firefox will not prompt you to open a second Profile when you launch it. But I don't want to close out my original Firefox Profile just start a new one.

The trick is to add -no-remote to the startup icon command for Firefox. So in my case I change the Command from firefox %u to firefox %u -no-remote. This option should be OS-agnostic, and work for Windows and Macs.

I even go so far as to create new Profiles for clients with high-security issues, so that things I store for one client doesn't somehow leak over or cause problems with other clients, especially with web vpn and firewall management apps that are pushed and stored on my local PC. If nothing else it helps to prevent against version conflicts with those apps, as I will bounce back and forth between clients, some that are one newer, and some on older, versions of those web vpn and firewall management apps.

Another reason for having multiple Profiles, but using the store passwords feature securely with a Master Password to access stored passwords, is that once you enter the Master Password, all stored passwords are available that are stored in that Profile until you close it.

This is a nice feature for convenience, but it just seems like a bad idea to have all of your passwords in one password storage location, guarded by a web browser. We all know web browsers are not that secure, and probably 99% of where a PC that has a good inbound firewall is vulnerable. I like knowing that all of my financial passwords or work passwords are not unlocked and accessible just because I logged into my Slashdot account so I could read geek news.