Top five Security & Privacy extensions for Firefox

Nov 26

How-To Guides David 2 Comments
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Following on from last week, this is my top five security & privacy extensions for Firefox.

Without further ado:

  1. Adblock Plus
    If you annoyed by adverts all over your web page, this will block them out. This may be something of a controversial one because many website owners say they depend on adverts to keep their sites going. I have two things to say that. First, if you’re blocking ads and really like a particular site; send them a donation. Second, from a security point of view, I see most web ad’s as vulnerable avenues of attack.
  2. Close n Forget
    By installing the Close n Forget button on your toolbar, you can close the current tab you’re on, along with deleting all of its related cookies and history entries. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but it’s worth having.
  3. CookieSafe
    This is an extension to prevent web sites from saving cookies on your system. Are able to set site by site permissions, and particularly good, you can block third party cookies.
  4. FlashBlock
    This extension will provide embedded Flash objects from being loaded into your page. Instead all you see if a place holder with the Flash icon. If you want to see the Flash object, just click on the place holder and it’ll load in as it was intended. This is particularly handy for sites like Myspace where people have music blasting out as soon as you arrive on their profile page.
  5. NoScript *****
    If you install no other Firefox extension, you should install this one. This one will protect you from malicious JavaScripts and other exploits such as “ClickJacking“. It does cause some inconvenience for you, much like CookieSafe, you approve sites on a site by site basis. Therefore, some sites may not work with this active because they rely on Javascript for formating and general function. It’s easy to allow sites to run Javascript though. I think think the inconvenience is worth the security. Given that these days we don’t have to worry so much about old-fashioned viruses and more about “drive by downloads” from malicious websites, NoScript becomes your first line of defence.
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Top 5 most useful Firefox extensions

Nov 19

How-To Guides David No Comments
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If you’re not already using it, hopefully you’ll be aware of the Firefox web browser. One of it’s killer features is that you can add “extensions” to expand it’s functionality. For the next two weeks I’m going to post a list of extensions that I think you should use. This week, I’ll post up extensions I use that are just generally useful. Next week, I’ll post up extensions that are for your privacy and security.

Here we go with the useful Firefox extensions:

  1. DownThemAll!
    This is a download manager for Firefox. Firstly, you selectively scrape all of the content from a page. Secondly, it also accelerates your downloads by using multiple threads.
  2. FoxClocks
    This extension allows you select various locations around the world and display the local time for all those locations.
  3. FoxMarks
    This extension allows you to back up your bookmarks remotely. They have also just added the same function for your Firefox password manager, although I haven’t yet decided if I’m comfortable using this. The best part of this is that when you’re away from home, you can access all of your bookmarks via a web interface (so you don’t need to be able to install the extension elsewhere to access your bookmarks).
  4. ImageZoom
    This extension allows you to blow up an image (without altering text size). All you do is hover your cursor over an image, hold down the right button and roll your mouse wheel.
  5. Linkification *****
    This is the one of the most modest yet everyday-useful extensions out there. Linkification will scan the page you’re on, looking for possible links, and will create hyperlinks on anything that hasn’t been already linked. This can save you a lot of time. For instance, if someone posts a web address without making it into a link, you have to copy & paste it to the URL bar (sorry, “Awesome Bar”). Linkification saves you this trouble by converting this to a hyperlink allowing you to simply click.
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