Daily Archives: 2014-01-23

Adding anonymous searching to your browser

Security

Anonymous Searching

Every time you use a search engine like Google or Bing, a record of your IP address is kept. Every computer connected to the internet requires an address to connect, and tools exist which expose your geographic location from your IP address. Sometimes this could be detailed enough to individually identify you, other times it may be enough to just locate your approximate area. The linking of search terms to your IP address also provides a link between your interests or thoughts. Again to use the library analogy, this is akin to someone reading over your shoulder all the time.

There are several solutions to address this, addressing different parts of the activity. Continue reading Adding anonymous searching to your browser →

Some techniques for protecting your privacy online

Security, ,

Protecting your privacy

Over the last year, more and more people have become aware of the privacy issues and the amount of tracking that

The use of tracking can help provide more targeted services and products to you, but the scale of the tracking has come as a great surprise to many people who just want to use the technology.

Continue reading Some techniques for protecting your privacy online →

Securing your browsing using HTTPS Everywhere

Security, ,

Securing your browsing

I would recommend that this is the first thing you do as part of securing your internet habits. What this does is try to make sure that all communication between you and the website that you are connecting to is encrypted. The success of this depends on the configuration of the web site you are connecting to. If the server does not provide encryption, then you won’t be able to connect securely. Many sites have a mixture of secure and insecure parts.

This wont’ hide the sites you visit, and it may not even hide the parts of the site you visit, but it will try and keep the information that you download as secure as possible.

The aptly-named HTTPS Everywhere from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) adds this capability to Firefox, Chrome and Opera browsers. Due to privacy issues with the Firefox Add-on site, they provide the link to the add-in on their own site.

Continue reading Securing your browsing using HTTPS Everywhere →