When you are in permanent Private Browsing mode (Always use Private Browsing mode; Never Remember History) then you do not get the purple PB mode mask because all tabs and windows are automatically PB mode tabs. A possible check can be the absence of Open Window in the File menu (i.e. you only have New Private Window).

You can use an extension to get Private Browsing mode support per tab.

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/private-tab/
• Private Browsing mode tabs get a dashed underline
• You can toggle Private Browsing mode out-of- via the right-click context menu of a tab

I understand that this can be solved with an extension but because this is a security issue in maintaining privacy I would think their is a method to confirm proper operation such as a web site or other notification without any add ons?

To websites it doesn't make a difference whether you are in normal mode or in PB mode and this has nothing to do with security. In PB mode no data is stored on disk in the Firefox profile folder and a website isn't able to detect that you use this feature. If you run Firefox in permanent PB mode then there is no indication in Firefox apart from the missing menu item to open a new normal window (you can only open a New Private Window).