Cookie WhiteList with Buttons

Although there is an extension that removes cookies per website called “Remove Cookies for Site” believe it or not, I can’t find an extension that will selectively allow cookies only on websites you want. Cookie Whitelist for Firefox is perfect in this respect.

Better Privacy

Better Privacy removes Flash Cookies when you close Firefox preventing websites tracking you over a number of sessions. It is possible to install a flash blockersuch as FlashBlock that will block “supercookies” but BetterPrivacy is a better option for me.

Link Checker Finjan Secure Browsing

WOT is available for Chrome (Web Of Trust) as a link rating extension similar to Siteadvisor by Mcafee but these do not scan links on the fly. Whoops whilst researching this I have found that AVG linkscanner does work with it’s active shield in Chrome (the bit that scans the pages before you click on them) but the search shield search results bit doesn’t. It might be best combining WOT with AVG. Finjan SecureBrowsing for Firefox however provides real-time scanning of search results.

Ghostery

Ghostery blocks web bugs -“Web bugs are hidden scripts that track your behaviour and are used by the sites you visit to understand their own audience.”

Nothing I can find can replace this great extension but according to MediaPost.com a Chrome version is in the pipeline.

NoScript

According to Giorgio Maone developer of Noscript “the technology infrastructure to make it possible is not there yet” although it sounds like he is keen to develop Noscript for Chrome. This is a shame as although it is possible to disable Javascript in Chrome it’s not possible on a site by site basis. Not sure how long we’ll need to wait for this one…
To make Chrome more private or secure there are a couple of other options:

1. Sandbox Chrome – Use Sandboxie to prevent anything from leaking out of your browser into your computer.
2. Use a proxy filter like Privoxy, this will remove ads and disable lots of annoying web page features (relatively difficult to setup for newbies).

Do you know of any good Chrome Security Extensions, let me know in the comments..

Photo by Steve Nagata on Flickr

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Display the Status of Caps Lock, Num Lock and Scroll Lock

Caps Lock v3.00

I’m going to use the ANNOYING CLICHE OF OOPS I’VE LEFT THE CAPS KEY ON AT THIS POINT AND APPEAR TO BE SHOUTING – but whilst I was doing this I had an audible beep going off with every key press and at the top of the screen was a red caption showing Caps Lock: On.

For this I am using Caps Lock v3.00 by George Jopling.

To turn the sound alert for caps lock and num lock on or off these are the options:

This window indicating Caps Lock Key Status can be placed anywhere on the screen and remains above other windows.

Caps Lock v3.00 Homepage

TrayStatus

TrayStatus will display the current state of your computers Caps Lock, Num Lock and Scroll Lock as well as displaying your hard drives current read / write activity. All of these are displayed in the system tray:

From left to right above we have Caps, Scroll, HD status (goes green and red with read write activity) and Num Lock Status.

It’s a tiny program that can help prevent incorrect inputs from the keyboard and is also freeware. This program requires the .Net framework 2.0 to run.

TrayStatus via MyDigitalLife

Keys

An alternative here which didn’t work too well for me but maybe fine for your OS is Keys by ClipperSolutions. It simply displays the status of the Caps Lock, Num Lock and Insert keys.

Keys

Change your Keyboard Keys Functions

Caps Lock Changer

To change the function of only your Caps Lock Key then Caps Lock Changer is your man, or program even. It can change it to a function key or a number of other keys and even disable it completely.

Caps Lock Changer v1.00 by Filebird

Alternates:

KeyTweak – Keyboard Remapper

SharpKeys 3.00 “make certain keys on a keyboard act like other keys”

Make Caps Lock, NumLock, ScrollLock Always On or Off

NumLocker

NumLocker sounds like it will lock the Numlock key only but it also can lock the caps key and ScrollLock keys. It can be started with windows and is accessed from the system tray. It has an intuitive right click menu that allows turning the keys on or off or locking them.

NumLocker Website via EliteFreeware

CapShift by Skrommel

CapShift extends the functionality of the Caps Key by showing a menu that can “change the selected text to lowercase, UPPERCASE, TitleCase, iNVERTEDcASE, RaNDoMCaSE or to Replace user defined characters.” It’s a small freeware program that can be set to start with windows.

CapShift by Skrommel

Skrommel also has a clever Showoff Utility that shows EVERY key press and mouse press as they are pressed.

To set the status of just the Numlock key at logon there is a nice page that has a couple of programs /scripts on Somacon.com.

Beep or Play a Sound If Caps / Other Keys are Toggled

Windows has a built in feature to “hear a tone when you press CAPS LOCK, NUM LOCK, SCROLL LOCK” called Toggle Keys, it can be found by following the path: Control Panel\ Ease of Access \Ease of Access Center \Make the keyboard easier to use.

To assign your own sounds to these events and also the Insert / Overtype Key CLiSoft have made Lockdown.

CLiSoft LockDown Homepage

Alternate Software for the Mac:

Capswarn will warn if you have caps selected. I can’t test this as I have no access to a Mac but it looks pretty cool. Shareware -  $6 however.

CapsWarn

Phew…I hope you found what you were looking for or found something useful here, please let me know in the comments….

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Maybe your antivirus will stop the malware but only if it has the Malware’s signature. This software is designed to stop programs executing from your USB flash drive or memory stick unless you want them to.  Auto starting executables are locked and can be deleted if you think they may be malicious. This is a better option than just blankly stopping all Autoruns settings on a computer.

It runs at startup and shouldn’t slow your system down. I have looked at other USB Security Freeware before but this app looks excellent in my opinion. If you share Dongles with friends (no pun intented) then this open source software (free) is essential.

No Autorun – USB Disk Virus Protection by qycaitian

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Online Web Safety Scan

AVG Web Safety Scan is a simple URL (web address) scanner. It will tell you if a page is safe to visit or not by scanning for malware with A.V.G. on the page.

Web URL Scanner

Norton Safeweb

Norton Safeweb will quickly tell you if a webpage is safe to visit by scanning with Norton’s scan engine’s.

Norton Safeweb

No Virus Thanks Bad I.P Detector

A great one stop solution (if you know the I.P. address) to see if a website is infected is from NovirusThanks.org. It’s called the Bad I.P. Detector and submit’s the I.P. address to 13 seperate online URL databases and link scanners to see if an URL is infected. Remember though that a website may share it’s I.P. with other websites if it is using shared and not dedicated hosting.

If you are a website owner then this site could be good place to check if other sites sharing your I.P. are giving your web site a bad name.

No Virus Thanks

No of any other web URL scanners? Let me know in the comments…

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Another problem is that they are not cleaned by your browser when you clear your browsers cache. Luckily there are several ways to manage or remove flash cookies. We have looked at Super Cookies before in March 2009 and compared them to normal web cookies.

Programs to Delete Flash Cookies (Super Cookies)

1. Ccleaner Deletes Flash Cookies

Already using Ccleaner? Don’t worry your covered as the option below shows that LSO’s will be removed by CCleaner.

2. Flash Cookie Cleaner

Consumersoft’s Flash Cookie Cleaner will either open a window showing the directory with flash cookies in or will delete all flash cookies.

3. Flash Cookies View by Nirsoft

Another great app from Nirsoft who get mentioned frequently on JonnysBlog. Flash Cookies View displays each cookie and also their contents. The contents of the cookies can be saved to a txt file.

4. BetterPrivacy

An effective plugin for Firefox is BetterPrivacy. It automatically removes Flash Cookies when Firefox exits.

If you use Firefox then this may be the easiest option for you.

Other ways of deleting LSO’s :

Alternatively LSO’s / Flash Cookies can be managed using the instructions from Adobe Macromedia themselves via the Website Storage Settings Panel.

Flash cookies can also be manually deleted by yourself by navigating to C:\Users\(Your Profile Name)\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia.com\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\(Web Site / App Path).

How do you manage Super Cookies? Let us know in the comments…

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How Easily Tracked are you on the Internet? Panopticlick Gives us an Answer…

Panopticlick is a new website launched that can look at the information given away by your browser. This browser information helps the website know which operating system and browser you are using so that  it can deliver the website correctly.

Unfortunately this information can also be used to track you. Even if you block cookies and javascript your browser gives a lot away. For example you may be surfing with Firefox, your time zone may be gmt, you may have 50 system fonts and be running windows 7. This is just some of the data given away, there is much more. This info is used to make a unique fingerprint and websites can tell if you’ve visited before and build a profile on you.

In a nutshell it’s another way for website’s to track users. Why does this matter?

Michael Kassner sums up the Privacy Issues.

I visited Panopticlick with the following browsers and got the following scores (score indicates no. of bits of info given away by browser):

Chrome 18.91

Internet Explorer 18.91

FireFox with Javascript. 18.91

Without Javascript using NoScript Extension for Firefox. 13.32

The EFF recommend that you disable Javascript on a per site basis as NoScript does.

Techrepublic has a nice breakdown of how Noscript effects your identifiable information as detected by Panopticlick. Panopticlick is by the Electronic Frontier Foundation E.F.F. who are a non profit organization that aims to defend  “free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights.”

Another website that I have written about before is mentioned by the EFF and that’s  Browserspy.dk. Here you can find more information about exactly what info you are showing to the website’s you visit.

Panopticlick

How do you defend your privacy? Is it an issue for you? .

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Ever clicked publish only minutes later to update your post. I have. Several times. Here is a list of checks to carry out before clicking publish.  This checklist is a reminder to myself that may help others.

• Title

Choose a catchy SEO title.

• Tags / Categories

Remember to use Tags and select a relevant Category.

• Excerpt

Write an optimized excerpt that sums up your post.

• Boldface Important Points

Adding Boldface can emphasize points and make reading easier. It can also influence SEO.

• Spelling and Grammar

Wordpress can check your spelling but it is always worth re-reading to ensure your post is easy to read and clear.

Writing in Windows Livewriter enables spelling to be checked also. This is a must have blogging tool for me as I find writing in the browser cumbersome.

• Preview

I always have a look at a preview of my post to ensure that everything looks aligned correctly. Sometimes for me an image looks okay while editing, but not so good when posted.

• Image

Add an image that catches the attention. Pictures used on this site tend to come from a Flickr search for photo’s with the Creative Commons Licence.

• Credits

Don’t forget to add credits or sources, ensure that if you have used other resources then then let everyone know. If you have used someone else’s pictures remember to credit them too.

• Internal Links

Have you any other posts that are similar or useful that could have been internally linked to in your text…add them. Even if you have a Similar Posts Plugin or Widget.
Picture by Orcmid

I hope this helps but if you have any more to add to this fairly short list please add them in the comments.

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I have just come across a couple of pretty handy websites to check out who is sharing your I.P. address. Unless you have paid extra for a dedicated server you will presumably be sharing with a few other websites. To check out who is sharing your I.P. You could try the following two webapps:

• You Get Signal Reverse I.P. Lookup This website will provide you with a list of who is sharing the same server as you. Additionally it highlights in red any website that may be seen as explicit.

• MyIPNeighbours.com Provides a similar service but may come up with a different result (it did for me).

Why is Sharing I.P. Servers Bad?

According to buildwebsite4u.com:

“Some SEOs suppose that there really is no good reason to obtain static IP Web hosting. Your site will not perform any better by having its own static IP.

Some others theorize that your choice of dedicated IP hosting vs. shared hosting might slightly affect your rankings (i.e. it’s a factor considered by search engines).

Yet others suppose that sharing an IP address with known spam or adult sites raises a warning flag with search engines, so some of them may respond by banning the entire IP address from their index.”

They also go on to say that these fears are probably exaggerated and I.P’s will need to be shared in the future anyway. Shared hosting is a lot cheaper generally too.

I believe that it is unlikely that two websites sharing the same I.P. would be associated in any way by search engines. This is because a lot of websites share I.P’s and it wouldn’t make sense for them to be associated in any way.

For now I’m sticking with my shared hosting…

Any shared hosting problems? Comment away….

Pic by Robert Scoble

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I’m loving the new improved Firefox 3.6 but again I’m not enjoying having to see if I can find alternatives for the disabled extensions. It can sometimes be a couple of days before the plugin developers catch up and release a newer compatible version.

Sometimes they never catch up and a plugin is left to die. Sad indeed.

On my installation the following plugins have been left disabled: (Firefox 3.6 Compatible updates NOT available on the links unless specified as of 21/01/2010.)

• Add to Netvibes
• Bookmark Duplicates Detector (Newer Version Available for 3.6)
• GreaseFire
• Page Speed
• SSL Blacklist
• Update Notifier
• YSlow

Are you having problems with the extensions for your Firefox? Comment Away…

Image by M i x y

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The usual way of associating files –>right click->open with->wasn’t working so I looked in the options and found an association page. This still didn’t work.

• The trick is…as should be tried with many programs if you have trouble…to open 7-zip as an administrator (right click and select Run as administrator).
• Then set the file associations in the menu. Sorted.

7-zip

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