This is no longer a lie.: Privacy enhancing browser extensions
Firefox:
adblock plus: uses subscription lists to block advertisements and behavioral tracking. Essential!
googlesharing: encrypts your google traffic and routes it through a proxy where it is combined with many other people.
https-everywhere: Automatically enables a secure connection for websites that supports it.
better privacy: Among other things, Better Privacy will delete “flash cookies” that are difficult to manage otherwise.
share me not: Protecting against tracking from third-party social media buttons while still allowing you to use them.
advanced: maybe also consider noscript or torbutton
Chrome:
adblock plus: uses subscription lists to block advertisements and behavioral tracking. Essential!
click & clean: Deletes your browsing history, typed URLs, Flash cookies, all traces of your online activity to protect your privacy.
KB SSL Enforcer: Enforces encryption for websites that support it.
NOREF: Suppress Referrer (referer) for Hyperlinks
disconnect: Stop third parties and search engines from tracking the webpages you go to and searches you do.
Speaking of Piracy: list of resources for background on #SOPA and #PIPA
On Wed. (Dec21) the House Judiciary Committee will vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Meanwhile the Protect IP Act is making its way through the Senate.
As the Center for Democracy and Technology writes, “If passed, these bills would cripple online innovation, chill online free expression, subvert the inner workings of Internet security, and compromise user privacy.”
At 1WebDesign, they’ve put together the following list of resources for background on SOPA and PIPA:
- Stop Online Piracy(Scary Facts)
- Protect IP Act Breaks the Internet
- DNS Filtering In SOPA/PIPA Won’t Stop Piracy, But Will Hurt Online Security
- Tech Giants Back Off SOPA Support
- Mozilla Renews Call Against SOPA/PIPA
- An Alternative To Blacklist Bills SOPA and PIPA
- Why Americans Need a Civil Liberties Caucus
- What SOPA Means for Business and Innovation(Infographic)
- AmericanCensorship.org Infographic
- ‘SOPA’: Internet Piracy Bills in Congress Threaten Core Values
- SOPA visual petition riles up the ‘geek lobby’
- Wikipedia may blackout all articles to protest SOPA
- Reddit users organizing a global mesh network
Don’t Censor the Net has resources for signing petitions and contacting representatives here.
KwikUpdate:
DeSOPA addon for firefox
How to use DeSopa: DNS Evasion
#SOPA Emergency IP List via pastie.org
Tumblr version of #SOPA Emergency IP List (warning Burt Reynolds.)
(Source: futurejournalismproject)
Firefox Add-On Bypasses #SOPA DNS Blocking Via @TorrentFreak
“The pending Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) continues to inspire opponents to come up with creative solutions to circumvent it.
A new anti-SOPA add-on for Firefox, titled “DeSopa,” is such a counter measure.
When installed, users can click a single button to resolve a blocked domain via foreign DNS servers, bypassing all domestic DNS blockades and allowing the user to browse the site though the bare IP-address (if supported).
“I feel that the general public is not aware of the gravity of SOPA and Congress seems like they are about to cater to the special interests involved, to the detriment of Internet, for which I and many others live and breathe,” DeSopa developer T Rizk told TorrentFreak.
“It could be that a few members of congress are just not tech savvy and don’t understand that it is technically not going to work, at all. So here’s some proof that I hope will help them err on the side of reason and vote SOPA down,” he adds.
Indeed, having several workarounds in place long before the bill is signed into law doesn’t promise much good for SOPA’s effectiveness.
If browsing a site through a single IP address is not supported, this other anti-SOPA plugin provides an alternative.”~TorrentFreak
Next #SOPA meeting Wed (tomorrow) #D21 Dec21
RT @torrentfreak ‘The Pirate Bay Dancing’ Add-On Killls DNS and IP Blockades #SOPA #TPB #internetcensorship
(Photo: TorrentFreak)
“Efforts to censor the Internet are increasing in the Western world. In the US lawmakers are currently discussing legislation (SOPA/PIPA) that could take out The Pirate Bay, or disable access to it. In several other countries such as Italy, Finland and Belgium, courts have already ordered Internet Providers to block their users’ access to the site. Demonstrating the futility of these efforts, a small group of developers today releases a browser add-on called “The Pirate Bay Dancing.”
When Homeland Security’s ICE unit started seizing domain names last year, a group called “MAFIAAFire” decided to code a browser add-on to redirect the affected websites to their new domains.
The release went viral and by now more than 200,000 people have installed the add-on. ICE wasn’t happy with this and asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. However, Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet.
Today MAFIAAFire delivers a new release that aims to thwart the increasing censorship efforts in countries worldwide. Named “The Pirate Bay Dancing,” the Firefox add-on undoes local DNS and IP blocks by routing users through a series of randomly picked proxies.
The MAFIAAFire team told TorrentFreak that the development of the plugin was partly motivated by SOPA and PIPA, the pending anti-piracy bills in the US.
“DNS and IP blocking is probably the most dangerous part of SOPA/PIPA in terms of ‘breaking the Internet,’ so we tackled that first. We will be going after the other parts of SOPA in later releases but probably not in ‘our usual plugin form’ – the other parts require different solutions that we have already started work on,” we were told.
Although the add-on carries The Pirate Bay in its name it also works with other sites such as Newsbin2 and BTJunkie which are blocked in the UK and Italy respectively. In a broader sense it can also be used to bypass national “firewalls” such as in China, and soon perhaps the US.
Putting the add-on to work only requires two clicks and is completely free.
After the add-on is installed users can specify the websites for which they want it to work, and these sites then trigger a response from the plugin. If someone from Italy for example chooses to unblock The Pirate Bay, the add-on will save this preference and load the site through a proxy on the next visit.
MAFIAAFire is using thousands of proxies which will be rotated constantly, hence the (dirty) dancing. The current version is fully working but TorrentFreak was told that the functionality will be expanded in future releases.”~Read More: TorrentFreak
@torrentfreak Stop Online #Piracy Act Opposition Bombards Congress #internetcensorship
“For those who’ve missed it, the Internet stood up against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) today.
Just a few random facts.
Every hour more than 23,000 emails are sent to Congress via the American Censorship campaign.
Tumblr users are sending 3.6 calls per second.
“Stop Online Piracy Act” is trending on Twitter.
Mozilla links to the anti-SOPA campaign from the default Home page of Firefox.”~torrentfreak
A personal VPN won’t save you from the Internet, but it doesn’t hurt - Chicago Sun-Times
A little article about VPNS and how you should srsly look into getting one for public and private surfing alike.
Here’s some more info if you are a nub.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Virtual_private_network
https://www.openvpn.net/
and lastly, if you aren’t ready for the commitment of a vpn please check out these addons that will make your internet surfing experience more secure. Firefox users.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
(everywhere besides tumblr (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/beef-taco-targeted-advertising/
