I use Firefox whenever I can.

On first install of the browser I usually end up following a hardening guide which includes stuff like blocking cross site cookies, setting a few things in about:config to disable Pocket/etc, and installing uBlock Origin. I’ve taken what I consider a relatively balanced approach, I don’t use anything like noScript, uMatrix, etc that ultimately just cost a lot of time fiddling to get the 10th website of the week working.

I’ve been more or less fine browsing the web this way for years, but around the start of 2024 I’ve started seeing way more “Access Denied” pages than I used to. I think part of it is Cloudflare or similar, but I don’t know exactly what’s changed or what’s triggering it to occur.

It usually goes away and I can re access the site in 10-30 minutes as usual, but I’ve had it occur in really weird instances, such as trying to change my Minecraft skin and getting blocked by the website. The server block often goes away immediately if I switch my user agent, so I know that it has something to do with how I’ve got everything set up.

Not sure what anyone else’s experience with this has been. I’d like to hear some of your thoughts and tips

  • @[email protected]
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    1610 months ago

    For work I’ve found that Microsoft Teams no longer works on Debian + Firefox. My workaround is a dedicated VM running debian with Chrome installed (and nothing else). We’ll see how long that works.

    • @[email protected]
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      1410 months ago

      Recently Teams is blocking Firefox even on Windows, but changing user agent was enough in my case…

    • @jecht360
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      610 months ago

      There’s a Linux install of Teams. I’ve never tried it on Debian but it works fine in Ubuntu. Use it for work every day.

      • @[email protected]
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        1410 months ago

        The official Linux client has been discontinued. Microsoft’s official solution is to use a browser – they explicitly mention Firefox.

        There also seem to be unofficial clients. No idea if those are any good.

        • @jecht360
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          110 months ago

          Huh, TIL. It’s still working just fine, so I’ll keep using it. Guess there won’t be any updates though.