8. Solve the Blank Form Mystery
When was the last time you filled out a form on a web page and clicked Submit, only to be told there's something wrong with what you've entered? You do as you're told and click the Back button to return to the previous page, but now the form is completely empty.
This
is caused by a bug in your web browser, not the web site. All versions
of Internet Explorer, and older releases of Netscape (versions 4.x and
earlier) exhibit this bug. Browsers based on the Mozilla engine, such as
Firefox and SeaMonkey, are better at saving form information, except
under certain circumstances. For instance, if a form is generated on the
fly, Mozilla browsers usually can't save the text you've typed into it.
To date, no browser handles form data in previously visited pages perfectly, but there are a few workarounds.
For
one, most web site designers are aware of the bug, and have built their
web sites accordingly. So, if you submit a form, and need to go back
and change what you've typed, don't press your browser's Back button. Rather, look for a Back button or Edit button right on the page, and click it to safely modify your text.
Next,
make a habit of performing an impromptu backup before you submit any
form. For instance, if you've written a long message, click in the text
box, press Ctrl-A to highlight all the text, press Ctrl-C to copy it, open Notepad, and press Ctrl-V
to paste. (Repeat these steps for each long field in the form.) If
you're later returned to an empty form, simply paste your text back into
the fields and try again.
Finally, Mozilla SeaMonkey can prefill most types of web forms. Just before submitting a form, select Edit → Save Form Info. Then, if the form is blank when you return (or if you encounter a new form requiring similar data), select Edit → Fill in Form to restore your data.
9. Stop Annoying Animations
It
seems like everywhere you go on the Web, something is pulsating, flying
across the screen, or playing music. So, how do you make this online
circus stop?
In most cases, pressing the Esc key stops the animations, but this is temporary and only works with animated .gif image files. If you want to permanently disable .gif animations altogether in Internet Explorer, open the Tools drop-down, select Internet Options, click the Advanced tab, and turn off the Play animations in web pages option. You can also turn off sounds and videos with similar settings in the same section. Click OK when you're done.
In Firefox and SeaMonkey, type about:config into the address bar to show the staggering list of all available fine-tuning options for these browsers. Find image.animation_mode in the list (type something like anim in the Filter field to locate it quickly), double-click the option, and type none in the Enter String Value box. If you don't want to completely disable animations, you can type once here instead (normal is the default) to let sites play all animations only once, but never repeat (loop) them. Click OK when you're done.
Other
types of animations require different strategies. To turn off Flash
animations in Internet Explorer, you must uninstall the Flash player
using Macromedia's elusive uninstaller tool, available at http://www.macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/ (search the knowledgebase for "uninstall").
But in Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey, you can use the powerful Adblock Plus extension, available for free at http://adblockplus.org/, to selectively hide animations. Once installed, restart your browser, and then go to Tools → Adblock Plus. Open the Options menu, and if the Show tabs on Flash and Java entry doesn't have a checkmark next to it, select it and then click OK. Thereafter, a little tab labeled Block will protrude from any Flash animation on a page (see Figure 4); just click the Block tab to show the address of the ad, and then click OK to begin blocking that particular Flash animation.
Adblock
Plus supports wildcards so that, for instance, you can block all Flash
animations from a particular server, rather than having to do it
manually for each one. The next time you click a Block tab, you'll see the address of the .swf file, like this:
http://advertising.server/ads/chipmunk.swf
Just replace the filename with an asterisk (*), like this:
http://advertising.server/ads/*
to block all the files from the /ads/
folder on that server. Adblock Plus will continue to hide these
animations until you manually remove the corresponding rule from the
Adblock Plus Preferences window.
Now, if the
animation, video, or sound is coming from an embedded Java applet, and
you don't have the luxury of an ad blocker, you can turn off Java
support altogether. In Internet Explorer, go to Tools → Internet Options, click the Security tab, click Custom Level, and in the JavaVM section, select Disable Java, and then click OK in both boxes. In Firefox, go to Tools → Options, choose the Web Features category, turn off the Enable Java option, and click OK. Or, in SeaMonkey, go to Edit Preferences, highlight the Advanced category, turn off the Enable Java option, and click OK.
JavaScript,
not to be confused with Java, is often used to create flyovers (where a
button or icon changes when you move the mouse over it) as well as
cursor trails (the flying bits that follow your mouse pointer). Now,
because so many sites rely heavily on JavaScript, it isn't a good idea
to turn it off just to purge these sorts of animations. In most cases,
you can curb annoying JavaScript behavior with an appropriate user script. If you're using Firefox or SeaMonkey along
with Adblock Plus, you can use the "Blockable items" window (press Ctrl-Shift-B) to block one or more of a specific site's external JavaScript source files.
10. Opt Out of Tabbed Browsing
Some
people like tabs because they can be used to reduce screen clutter, but
if you don't specifically want to use them (for instance, if you like
to view pages side-by-side), tabs are just a nuisance.
Fortunately, it's easy to do away with tabs in Internet Explorer. Just open the Tools drop-down, select Internet Options, and choose the General tab. In the Tabs section, click Settings, and turn off the Enable Tabbed Browsing option. Click OK and then OK again, and then close any open Internet Explorer windows for the change to take effect.
If
you're using Firefox or SeaMonkey, turning off tabbed browsing is a
little more involved. To disable all tabs in Firefox or SeaMonkey
permanently, install the free TabKiller extension available at https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/1938,
and then restart Firefox. Thereafter, Firefox will ignore any attempts
to open new tabs, instead opening such links directly. (To have Firefox
open such links in new windows, go to Tools → Extensions, highlight TabKiller, click Options, turn on the Open new windows instead of new tabs option, and click OK.)
On
the other side of the fence are those who despise the pile-up of
windows, and are happy to put up with tabs to keep the browser window
tidy. If you fall into this category (and you're a Firefox user),
install the Switch Windows Mode extension, free from https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/3881, or the This Window extension, free from http://www.mrchucho.net/downloads/thiswindow.xpi.
If
you don't want to turn off tabbed browsing or mess with add-ons, you
can use keystrokes to control what happens when you click links:
Internet Explorer
Hold Ctrl when clicking a link to open it in a new tab, or Shift to open it in a separate window. If you have IE's pop-up blocker set to the highest filter level, you can also press Ctrl-Alt to temporarily allow pop ups from the site.
Firefox
Like IE, hold Ctrl when clicking a link to open it in a new tab, or Shift to open it in a separate window. You can also hold Alt to save the link target on your hard disk.
SeaMonkey
Hold Ctrl when clicking a link to open it in a new window, or Shift to save the link target on your hard disk.
In any browser, you can also right-click a link and select Open in New Window or Open in New Tab to control tabs from the comfort of your index finger.
11. Surf Anonymously
Web sites you visit know more about you than you probably realize. Along with the browser signature, your browser sends your PC's Internet IP
address to every web site it visits, and from that, a web site can
extract some pretty interesting things. (See the upcoming "What Can They Find Out About You?" sidebar for the nitty gritty.)
Your
IP address is sent to every web site you visit. While no one can
determine your exact street address directly from your IP address, there
are ways to infer this information with elaborate tracking schemes.
Think of your IP address as a serial number, a unique identifier some
web sites can use to identify you when you visit. For
instance, let's say you make a purchase from an online store that sells
toasters. As soon as you pay for that fancy new four-slicer, the store
records your name, street address, credit card information, and your IP address.
Provided the toaster store keeps your private information private,
you've got nothing to worry about. But can you say the same thing for
the other site you just used to sign up for a free plasma TV? This
is where advertising comes in. Most ads on many web sites originate
from only a handful of companies, and those companies track who's
looking at their ads, even when you don't click them. If you view a page
at a news web site that displays a banner ad hosted by, say, adknowledge.com or targetnet.com, and then you sign up to win a free TV on another site that has another ad from the same agency,
that ad server knows you've visited both sites. What's more, if the ad
agency is in cahoots with the people who are giving away the TV, they
have your email address, street address, shoe size, and anything else
you typed into the sweepstakes sign-up page. Now,
most folks have dynamic IP addresses, which change every time they start
a connection, but a single IP can remain active all day (or with a
router, for weeks at a time), which means your IP address can be used to
track quite a bit of your online activity. And with a geolocation tool
like http://www.yougetsignal.com/,
anyone can find your approximate location. What's more, many
unscrupulous sites use so-called tracking cookies to do the same
thing—namely, tag your PC with a unique serial number that can be read
as you visit many different sites. So, how can you stop the snooping? Most antispyware software is designed to scan your system and delete any tracking cookies it
finds, but you may want to take it one step further and configure your
browser to not accept any cookies from these sites. You can get a list
of known tracking sites from http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/pest/browse.aspx?cat=tracking%20cookie.
(If this feels like overkill, block only those sites responsible for
the cookies your antispyware software finds on your PC.) To block
cookies in Internet Explorer, go to Tools → Internet Options, choose the Privacy tab, and click Sites. In Firefox, go to Tools → Options, choose the Privacy category, expand the Cookies section, and then click Exceptions. Or, in SeaMonkey, go to Tools → Cookie Manager → Manage Stored Cookies. |
Use
a proxy server to mask your IP address (and yes, your state) from the
web sites you visit. As the name implies, a proxy server stands between
your browser and the sites you surf, in effect "hiding" you from prying
sites. Once you set up a proxy server, all information you send and
receive with your browser goes through that server (email and other
programs must be configured separately to use the proxy). Most large
companies use their own proxy servers to help protect the data on
company PCs from prying eyes, but you don't have to work at a big
company to get the same protection.
Start by visiting http://annoyances.org/ip to view your IP address as web sites see it. Then, go to http://www.proxy4free.com/, click page 1, and find any server marked "anonymous." Highlight its IP address and press Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard; also note the Port shown in the adjacent column. Next, configure your browser to use that proxy server.
Wondering
whether you can trust the proxy service not to use your IP and other
info for nefarious purposes? The truth is that there's no reason to
trust an anonymous proxy any more than the sites from which you're
hiding. For practical purposes, you should only use one of these proxies
when you specifically need to surf anonymously, and avoid logging in to
your bank's web site while connected to a proxy. |
|
If you're using Internet Explorer, open the Tools drop-down, select Internet Options, choose the Connections tab, and click LAN Settings. Turn on the Use a proxy server for your LAN option, and then paste (press Ctrl-V) the IP address you got at proxy4free.com into the Address field. Type the port number (usually 80 or 8080) into the Port field, and click OK when you're done.
If
you find yourself using proxies often, you may want to reduce the
number of trips you make to Internet Explorer's LAN Settings window.
Click the Advanced button, and in the Exceptions box, type the addresses of web sites you want to connect to directly (no proxy). |
|
Settings
made in the Internet Options window affect Internet Explorer only, so
you'll have to use a slightly different procedure for other browsers. If
you're using Firefox, go to Tools → Options, choose the General category, choose the Connection Settings tab, and select Manual proxy configuration. If you're using SeaMonkey, go to Edit → Preferences → Advanced → Proxies, and select Manual proxy configuration.
Now, go back to http://annoyances.org/ip
and notice that your IP has changed! (If you can't load the page, the
proxy server is down; just choose another proxy server from proxy4free.com,
and try again.) From here on, every site you visit will see your proxy
server's IP address instead of yours until you disable the proxy.
Every
byte of data you send and receive with your web browser will be sent
through the proxy server. Unless you know—and trust—whoever is hosting
that server, you should always disable the proxy before sending
sensitive information (e.g., your home address, credit cards, etc.). |
|
If
you don't want to go to the trouble of setting up a proxy server
whenever you visit sketchy web sites, there are alternatives. One
solution is to use a free, single-serving proxy web site, such as
Proxify (http://proxify.com/), The Cloak (http://www.the-cloak.com/), and the Private Surfing box in the upper-right corner at Anonymizer (http://www.anonymizer.com/). Just type or paste the URL of the site you want to visit into the text box on any of these pages, and press Enter.
The proxy site will load up the page, allowing you to surf anonymously
for this session. Click the links in the page to continue surfing
anonymously, or use your browser's address bar, bookmarks, or Internet
Shortcuts to return to the normal, non-proxy surfing.
Anonymizer
also has a free Privacy Toolbar (for Internet Explorer only), which
does pretty much the same thing as the web-based Anonymizer, albeit with
a slicker interface.
If you're using Firefox, check out the excellent FoxyProxy add-on, available for free from http://foxyproxy.mozdev.org/.
Among other things, FoxyProxy makes to easy to switch between proxy
servers (or none at all), and even lets you set up rules (called
patterns) to automatically enable a specific proxy when you visit
certain web sites.
If you want more flexibility
than web-based proxies can offer, and don't mind paying for it, try
Anonymizer's Anonymous Surfing tool, the Anonymous Browsing Toolbar 3.3 (http://www.amplusnet.com/), or Hide the IP (http://www.hide-the-ip.com/).
These products, in the form of software you install on your PC, perform
pretty much the same function as the web-based proxies mentioned above,
albeit with more features and speed. All things considered, these
software-based proxies are probably marginally safer than anonymous
proxies, and less of a hassle than web-based proxies.
Now, you might be thinking, why not just use a router? Well, routers—offer
terrific firewall production and indeed act as a layer between your PC
and the rest of the Web. But when you surf from behind a router, web
sites still see your router's IP address, and thus are still able to collect all the same information about you and your geographical location.
