Malvertising or malicious advertising is a common problem in the internet and the default Firefox browser configuration does not sufficiently protect a Solus user from it. What can be done about it?
- Include trustworthy Firefox extensions which support Firefox 57+ out of the box. I think this would be in line with privacy by design principles and providing sane defaults for increased usability and user protection. Desktop environments such as GNOME and MATE are also shipped with extensions to increase usability, for example.
- If the inclusion of Firefox extensions is rejected on the grounds of hijacking a vanilla browser experience and potentially increasing the attack surface (in my opinion the advantages outweigh the disadvantages here), then I'd recommend to add a post-installation section to the software center where users can choose to fine-tune their system based on their individual preferences. Not opting for either of these two, in my view, leaves those most vulnerable who are not technically proficient enough to make a reasonable choice of what extensions to install or even know that such extensions exist. Such a curated list of recommended extensions could include the following two: Privacy Badger (by EFF Technologists: https://github.com/EFForg/privacybadger) and uBlock Origin (by Raymond Hill: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)