“Java is a plugin for web browsers that is installed on approximately 66% of all computers. However there are very few websites that still rely on the features that it provides, leaving those 66% of computers vulnerable to attack when the dated technology is exploited. This has unfortunately happened several times in the past few months.” — Examples of why you should disable Java Continue reading
If you are a Firefox user who has AdBlock Plus some sites detect you have that add-on installed and serve you a message like, “Can you please disable your ad blocker for just this site? As you surf the Web, information is being collected about you. Web tracking is not 100% evil — personal data can make your browsing more efficient; cookies can help your favorite websites stay in business. But, says Gary Kovacs, of Mozilla it’s your right to know what data is being collected about you and how it affects your online life. He unveiled the Firefox add-on to do just that. Continue reading
Formulated by the White House, Federal Trade Commission and the Digital Advertising Alliance, Do Not Track will allow Internet users to add a Do Not Track header from browsers such as Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer. This will tell Websites not to track them across the Web. Continue reading
Danny Sullivan blogs on a new report by Chitika, which analyzed a week’s worth of traffic across its ad network sites from July 20 to 26, 2011, for North America. Bing Users Are From Internet Explorer; Google Users From Firefox, Chrome & Safari.
In light of the “private browsing” claims being made, 
Stanford University conducted research to investigate the privacy of the “private browsing” feature on some web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari). Apparently, many popular browser extensions and plugins undermine the security of private browsing and many kinds of information can be leaked by browsers when using the “private browsing” mode.
Privacy mode, sometimes informally referred to as “porn mode”, is a term that refers to privacy features in some web browsers. Historically speaking, web browsers store information such as browsing history, images, videos and text within cache. … en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_browsing
An Analysis of Private Browsing Modes in Modern Browsers (Gaurav Aggarwal and Elie Bursztein, Stanford University; Collin Jackson, CMU; Dan Boneh, Stanford University) will be presented at the USENIX security conference and it suggests that the these browser tools aren’t really private after all.
We study the security and privacy of private browsing modes recently added to all major browsers. We first propose a clean definition of the goals of private browsing and survey its implementation in different browsers. We conduct a measurement study to determine how often it is used and on what categories of sites. Our results suggest that private browsing is used differently from how it is marketed.
We then describe an automated technique for testing the security of private browsing modes and report on a few weaknesses found in the Firefox browser. Finally, we show that many popular browser extensions and plugins undermine the security of private browsing. We propose and experiment with a workable policy that lets users safely run extensions in private browsing mode. PDF file (15 pages)
1. Do you use “private browsing”
2. If you do use “private browsing” which browsers and add-ons, extensions, plugins, etc. do you use?
3. Did you place any confidence in the “private browsing” claims previous to reading about this research?
My blogging buddy raincoaster gave me a heads up on Zemanta, a free blogging tool that does what no others do. I did some searching and blog hopping to see what other bloggers thought of it. Continue reading
Have you ever found yourself staring at a blog or web site and wishing the text size was large enough for you to read it with ease? Or have you experienced the opposite; text that you wished you could shrink? There are some easy keyboard shortcuts you can use to increase or decrease the size of text on any web page you view by making adjustments to your browser. Continue reading
