Orangeinks

Find Out how Companies are Tracking your Internet Browsing Activities and how to Prevent it

Collusion is a Firefox Add-on that lets you visually monitor how companies are tracking your browsing habits. If you’re not using Firefox or don’t have the plugin installed, you can still go to the Collusion page to learn through the demo of an interactive, real-time visualization of entities that track your behavior across the web.

By installing the plugin, you’ll be able to see the graph (similar to the demo…see pic) change in real-time based on the sites you visit on your browser.

Now that you are aware that companies are tracking your every move online, and you now know how they are doing it, you might want to put a stop to it. If you do, you can simply download and install another Firefox plugin called Trackerblock. The plugin is available for Firefox and Internet Explorer only. If you’re using Chrome, you might want to go look for an alternative.

 

Tags: Behavior, browsing, Firefox, Plugin

Securely Browse the Web with HTTPS EveryWhere for Firefox

HTTPS Overview

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with the SSL/TLS protocol to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of a network web server. This simply means that when you are browsing under the HTTPS web protocol, you can breathe easier and not worry about your online information being stolen by someone from your network. For added information about SSL/TLS and other Jargon, look it up on Wikipedia.

How to Browse Securely All the Time

HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox extension that will give you additional security and privacy when browsing your favorite websites. HTTPS is important when you are browsing unsecure networks such as public WIFI (e.g. coffee shops, hotels, etc.). And you would definitely want something like this if you want to protect your information from people who would want to steal them using readily available tools like Firesheep.

Many sites on the web offer some limited support for encryption over HTTPS, but make it difficult to use. For instance, they may default to unencrypted HTTP, or fill encrypted pages with links that go back to the unencrypted site. The HTTPS Everywhere extension fixes these problems by rewriting all requests to these sites to HTTPS. This simply means that if HTTPS is available on a website, HTTPS Everywhere will suck it out and secure your information whenever it can.

Note: Just a reminder when using HTTPS Everywhere and browsing Google for images while using HTTPS Everywere, the image search (link) disappears. You need to un-tick the Google Search in the HTTPS Everywhere Options and restart your Firefox if you want to view (search) images from Google.

Chrome users can use KB SSL Enforcer.

 

Tags: browsing, chrome, Firefox, HTTPS, HTTPS Everywhere, security

Surf Together in Real Time with Screen2

Screen2 is a web service which allows you to navigate the web with your buddy in real time. There are many desktop sharing applications out there that allow you to do the same thing. The only difference in Screen2 is that it only lets you share the browser view and not the entire desktop. This will allow you to do other things while someone else is doing the surfing for you.

This web app is particularly useful if you want to do the surfing for a friend or let a friend do the surfing for you. Sometimes the web gets confusing and might need someone to guide you through it. It’s a great tool for showing online stuff to your friends in real time. Just choose a name and let your friend choose his/her Screen2 identity. Invite the screen name and you can begin surfing with your friend once the invitation has been accepted.

Screen2 does not allow you to see the cursor movements of the one in control of Screen2. It would have been useful if the cursor movements are displayed which will be a great help in live tutorials for navigating a certain web applications or sites.

Screen2 is an easy and safe application. There is no requirement of an installation of a software add-on in order to use Screen2. There is also no need to register for an account. All you need to do is to allow pop-up windows and cookies in your browser for Screen2 to operate properly. A chat feature is also available for additional collaboration.

Enjoy browsing together.

Tags: browsing, Real time, screen2, surfing

Navigaya: Reinventing Surfing Experience

Navigaya is a browsing service that gives a whole new experience in browsing. The service looks great and sports a futuristic design.The flash platform allows you surf in style and in multiple flash widgets. It’s customizable to a certain extent to fit your taste and cater to your browsing needs.

The search feature allows you to search multiple search engines at a time. The search results are displayed in windows from three of the most popular search engines out there namely Google, Yahoo and MSN. A fourth window for Wikipedia search results is also included. If you are not satisfied with the search result you got from the first three search engines, you can always go to the next set of search results from other search engines by clicking the next button or have your search power customized to display results from search engine(s) of your choice. If you found the result that you want, you can immediately start browsing from the window where you found your result. Just hit the full screen mode for a more focused browsing/reading and revert it back to its normal mode in case you want to browse other pages.

In addition to the great look of Navigaya, it also lets you listen to music (with video playing on the background) while browsing. It may not be for everyone for it may cause some distractions to others. You can however turn the playing music video in the background off easily if you don’t want it to interfere with your browsing or you can customize the playlist to fit your music taste or run a tutorial from YouTube while browsing.

The browsing capailities of Navigaya is far from perfect. When I tried to browse different URL’s (including my blog), It failed to load some widgets and CSS. I don’t know if this is the effect of going through their servers or that the pages just loaded a lot slower resulting in time outs in the loading process. Issues like these needs to be resolved in the beta process.

Navigaya also lets you choose from categories and displays related websites for you to choose from depending on your taste. The websites that appear in each category is however not customizable. You cannot add or remove sites from the Navigaya categories. It would be great though if they can add this feature or if not, just add a personal customizable category.

Navigaya works great with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. I tested it in Opera and it seems to work fine. Just choose the Internet Explorer and Firefox browser if you will be using Navigaya in Opera. It’s a must try if you are looking for a different browsing experience.

Edit: The cageories are changable/editable. You need to register in order to edit categories. Thanks to Amit of Navigaya for clearing it up.

Tags: aggregator, browsing, flash site, search-engine, surfing

Firefox Tip: Make Firefox Browse Faster

This is an old Firefox trick that I have been using for a few years now. It is said that when you download Firefox it is initially optimized for dial-up connection browsing. Meaning it can only load one file at a time. This tweak will open up that restriction and allow multiple objects to be downloaded simultaneously by Firefox for a given time depending on your connection. Just follow the instructions below:

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return(Enter). Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining

network.http.proxy.pipelining

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

When you enable pipelining it will make several requests at once, which will really speed up the page loading. What is pipelining? Normally, HTTP requests are issued sequentially, with the next request being issued only after the response to the current request has been completely received. Depending on network latencies and bandwidth limitations, this can result in a significant delay before the next request is seen by the server.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true“

Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number between 8 and 30. This means it will make x requests at once. Remember to be careful on choosing your value for this, for if you set it too high it might also affect your browsing negatively. But, if you really have a high speed connection, then give it a high number.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere (on the white part of the about:config page) and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you are afraid that you might screw things up and you don’t want to go to all that tweaking the configuration and go Jedi Master with Firefox, you can download this Firefox Extension that will pretty much do the same thing. Just download and install the plugin and restart Firefox.

After restarting your browser, click on the Tools menu and hit Tweak Network Settings and a window like the image above will open. Just click the Power button and the settings will change. Remember, if you are going to play around with the values and got a negative effect on your browsing speed, just hit the default button and the settings will reset. Enjoy the tip and happy browsing.

Note: This tweak only works for Broadband users

Tags: browse, browsing, faster, Firefox, hack, tip, tweak