firefox add-on

Much has been made of Google's new privacy policy, which takes effect March 1. If you're concerned about Google misusing your personal information or sharing too much of it with advertisers and others, there are plenty of ways to thwart Web trackers.

But what exactly are you thwarting? You don't become anonymous when you block tracking cookies, Web beacons, and the other identifiers as you browse. Your ISP and the sites you visit still know a lot about you, courtesy of the identifying information served up automatically by your browser.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers the Panopticlick … Read more

Avoid ordering goods from third-parties on Amazon with this crafty add-on for Chrome and Firefox.

If you're concerned about the shipping or packaging methods that other companies use, this is a great way to avoid buying from those companies. When you are looking for particular items, only the ones that Amazon has for sale will appear. Keep in mind that while Amazon does have a lot of items for sale, you may not be able to find every item you seek. Here's how to get started:

Step 1: Add the Shipped and sold by Amazon extension&… Read more

There's one thing you can do to avoid being the victim of identity theft: follow this 10-step PC security plan.

Encrypt your network connection Most popular sites offer HTTPS connections at least some of the time. In Gmail, click the gear icon in the top-right corner and select "Always use https" under the General tab.

To select Facebook's HTTPS setting, click the down arrow in the top-right corner and choose Account settings. Select Security in the left pane and Edit in the Secure Browsing section of the main window. Check "Browse Facebook on a secure … Read more

If at first you can't learn your social skills, try, try again. At least, that's what the Mozilla Foundation is doing.

Following the demise of the first Firefox initiative to bring a more modern range of social sharing to the browser, Mozilla has released today its second attempt in early alpha called Firefox Share (download).

Mozilla has lofty plans for Firefox Share. Along the same lines as the Firefox Weave add-on that later became the default-shipping feature known as Sync, Jay Sullivan, Mozilla's vice president of products, told CNET during a meeting at the company's new … Read more

Mozilla upgraded its developer's edition of Firefox today to version 8, including changing how forced third-party add-ons are handled and debuting a series of under-the-hood tweaks that continue a renewed assault on performance gains made in Firefox 7 Beta. Firefox 8 Aurora can be downloaded for Windows, Mac and Linux, and it marks the first release of Aurora for Android.

Two add-on changes were revealed last week that represent, for the first time in possibly years, that Mozilla has forced changes on how third-party programs and Firefox interact. Basically, Mozilla is disabling the ability of a third-party program, like … Read more

The security add-on for Firefox called HTTPS Everywhere (download) that forces HTTPS encryption on numerous popular Web sites has graduated to its first stable release, about a year after it was released into public beta.

The tool does not let you force HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) willy-nilly on Web sites. Instead, it includes a series of rules that supports sites that allow HTTPS encryption. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said in the blog post announcing the release that it encompasses more than 1,000 popular sites, including Google Search, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, bit.ly, GMX, Wordpress.com blogs, The New … Read more

There aren't many security-focused browser add-ons that funnel the entire Internet through a proxy before allowing it to reach you, and that rarity was part of the reason Cocoon was one of a small group of add-ons that charged for its services. Starting today, however, the makers of Cocoon (download) have exclusively told CNET that the add-on will be completely free--for now.

The add-on, which appears as a toolbar in Firefox, creates a protected browsing state. When active, all interactions between the Internet and the computer you're using are forced to occur over protected SSL connections to Cocoon'… Read more

Maybe you want to give credit where it's due, or just make a note of that one awesome site that seems to point you toward all the answers to your tech questions. Searching your browser history can be hit or miss, especially if you want to know how you came to find any particular page. Firefox users have an easy way to keep track of browsing history in threads, like email conversations. Here's how to get started:

First, head over to Mozilla and install the FromWhereToWhere add-on.

The next time you want to head down Memory Lane, instead … Read more

One of Firefox's most popular features is its add-on support, with its accompanying deep add-on catalog. The new Firefox 4 Mobile for Android (download) and for Maemo devices (download) also support add-ons, so we've got a collection of Firefox mobile add-on essentials for you that covers the bases, from useful ad blocking to interesting, mobile-specific password helpers.

The best-known add-on that's a must-have is Adblock Plus (download), ported by the developer from Firefox desktop to mobile. If you're not familiar with it, it blocks ads by using blacklists to filter out the ads. Once installed, the … Read more