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hpr1728 :: Requested Topic: Favourite Browser Extensions

Fin talks about his favourite browser extensions.

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Hosted by Fin on Wednesday, 2015-03-18 is flagged as Explicit and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.
browser extensions, firefox, noscript, https everywhere, adblock edge, librejs. 3.
The show is available on the Internet Archive at: https://archive.org/details/hpr1728

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Duration: 00:20:04

Privacy and Security.

In this open series, you can contribute shows that are on the topic of Privacy and Security

NoScript is great for blocking JavaScript that may be undesirable. Scripts tend to track users or load obtrusive or undesirable content in my experience. NoScript also blocks Adobe Flash and Java which can be resource hogs. A simple click will activate them. Scripts can be enabled or disabled by site.

HTTPS Everywhere will automatically direct your browser to a secure https version of sites you visit, if available. Great for security (obviously).

Adblock Edge is a great ad blocker. It blocks all ads no matter how obtrusive they are. Does not contain hidden white-list like more popular ad blocker: Adblock Plus.

LibreJS targets non free JavaScript. I think it is a fantastic idea but makes too many sites unusable. I prefer NoScript as I can more easily micro-manage scripts per domain.

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Comment #1 posted on 2015-03-18 20:35:49 by zloster

Other useful browser extensions for Firefox

First, congratulations for the good episode.

I would like to add two extensions that are very useful to be privacy and security aware while browsing and in the same time require almost no user intervention:
1) https://www.eff.org/privacybadger - this is a tool created by EFF (Electronic Frontier Fondation). It blocks spying ads and invisible trackers. The best part is that it learns which sites are trying to track you and automatically blocks them. You can always override/stop the block if you want;
2) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ssleuth/ - it ranks an established SSL/TLS (the one's with https in front) connection and gives a brief summary rating with all the details and a numeric rank from 0 to 10.

Another useful extention that is not privacy related is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sqlite-manager/ - with it you can manage any SQLite database on your computer. For example Skype application have such a file where the content of all conversions are stored.

Comment #2 posted on 2015-06-01 23:44:46 by Bob Evans

Ad-Block Edge discontinued

Today I installed Ad-Block Edge and the mozilla.org download page said it would be discontinued on June 5, 2015.

Comment #3 posted on 2015-10-30 18:29:43 by Fin

Ad-Block Edge Successor

As Bob Evans noted, Ad-Block Edge has now been discontinued. I now use uBlock Origin as it is recommended by the creators of Ad-Block Edge. It continues to provide excellent ad blocking without a built in white list or spyware (AFAIK).

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