Paranoia as my guide

On the net we all do things we are not meant to; may it be visiting sites we are not meant to be on or trying to hide our activities from other users on the shared computer. Paranoia and fear of being caught plays a role, as well keeping our computers secure.

So following on from my previous article about firefox addons for webmasters below are a few for the security conscious or paranoid users out there.

Adblock Plus

This is a vital and key component for your Firefox arsenal. A lot of good sites are riddled with advertisements and they sometime spoil the overall experience.

This addon blocks all the most common adds and allows you to block other aspects manually by selecting them. On the other hand if you like a site and wish to support it my viewing adds and the such you can add it to the ’safe list’.

CookieSafe / Lite version

This addon allows you to determine whether to allow a cookie to be saved from the site you are visiting. You can allow; allow for the session or temporarily allow. As well as the option to clear all cookies, view them and even edit them.
The lite version is essentially the same but does not have the extra functions.

Distrust

I cannot say exactly how this differs from clearing the private data automatically upon closing Firefox, but I used it mostly for some quick in session clearing when i had promlems with some sites.

The description from author: ‘hide surfing trails that the browser leaves behind. Once turned on this extension monitors Firefox for its activities. Once turned off Distrust will remove history items cache and cookies that were used during the distrust session.’

KeyScrambler

One of the better tools in my arsenal of protection , basically put it ’scrambles’ all your keystrokes in private areas (passwords screens/ https areas etc), very useful if you are worried about keyloggers and use high value sites such as banking, shopping etc.

Noscript

If your using Firefox chances are you have heard or even got this addon. What this does is allows you to control which scripts to run. As most nasties are spread via javascripts and the such this is a great defensive tool.

PhProxy /Torbutton

For true anonymity proxies are the king. The main two that i use are PhProxy and Torbutton. they are very easy to setup and very easy to use. You can toggle them on and off at will and string them together.

The down side though is that it is usually slower to surf via proxy, though i have found the proxies i PhProxy have decent speeds.

Showip

This does what it says on the box it shows the IP addresses of the site you are visiting with an option to check DNS information etc. useful if you want to keep track where your favorite sites are moving to.

There are probable loads more around that are very useful, feel free to mention them. These are just the ones i use and find invaluable.

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