Essential Extensions For Safe Web Browsing
The internet transformed in the past two decades, technologies emerged, technologies vanished, ecosystems changed, and security became more important than ever.
The internet is an integral part of our life, we can’t stop using services or browsing websites but we need to protect ourselves while doing so. In this article, I share some useful web extensions that will improve your online security and privacy.
uBlock Origin
uBlock Origin is a prevalent ad-blocker that doesn’t exhaust your computer resources. It’s essential for an ad-free web browsing and protects you from malicious ads which are becoming more prevalent nowadays.
HTTPS Everywhere
The web is moving towards secure protocols as the default. More and more websites are now running over HTTPS, and the birth of Let’s Encrypt made such a move much easier and affordable for everyone.
HTTPS Everywhere helps you stay secure on the internet by enforcing secure connections. You could even go full cold turkey and only allow connections to websites running over HTTPS.
Privacy Badger
Trackers are everywhere on the internet, every website we visit, every service we use are tracking our clicks, our choices, and preferences. It’s ridiculous, and it’s difficult to escape. Private Badger blocks most trackers, including invisible ones. It also blocks link click tracking used by most social media services.
Facebook Container
Facebook Container protects you from Facebook tracking your web browsing by isolating your Facebook activity from the rest of your web browsing activity.
(Firefox)
NoScript Security Suite
Have you tried disabling JavaScript on your web browser recently? It would most likely break about 90% of the websites you visit. JavaScript (among other scripting languages) become an integral part of the web, and without it we can’t use the websites and services available to us to the fullest. The problem comes when malicious people use scripts to attack us through websites.
No script protects you against malicious scrips by blocking them from running. It takes sometime to get used to it, but it’s a worthy investment.
(Firefox)
A Password Manager Extension
There is no excuse for anyone to not use a password manager. Different password managers support almost all the functions one might want in a password manager. If you use a password manager, you need to install their web browser extension to facilitate your daily usage of the manager. It will make your life easier. (1Password, LastPass, Bitwarden)