Sometimes we have to run an application that we do not trust, but we are afraid that it might look at or delete our personal data, since even though Linux systems are less prone to malware, they are not completely immune. Maybe you want to access a shady-sounding website. Or perhaps you need to access your bank account, or any other site dealing with sensitive private information. You might trust the website, but do not trust the add-ons or extensions installed in your browser.
In each of the above cases, sandboxing is useful. The idea is to restrict the non-trusted application in an isolated container -a sandbox– so that it does not have access to our personal data, or the other applications on our system. While there is a software called Sandboxie that does what we need, it is only available for Microsoft Windows. But Linux users need not worry, since we have Firejail for the job.
So without further ado, let us see how to set up Firejail on a Linux system and use it to sandbox apps in Linux: