My state-wide teaching tour continues next Monday, March 19, 2012, 6:30 p.m. at the Southern Oaks Library in Oklahoma City, OK.
My class, “Fight the Internet Bad Guys and Win!” will teach you how to defeat the Internet bad guys who want to mess with your life. The class is free, one night only, and will last about 90 minutes. If you use a computer, you should attend. Visit my website for more details.
One section of the class covers those programs we use every day called “browsers.” “I don’t use a ‘browser,'” you may be thinking. “All I ever do is surf the Internet, looking for cool websites. What’s a ‘browser,’ anyway?”
A browser is a program that lets you look at websites; that’s all it is. It lets you “browse” the Internet, looking at websites. Internet Explorer, which comes as part of the Windows operating system, is a browser. Google Chrome is a browser. Firefox is a browser. There are many other browsers out there to choose from, such as Apple Safari, Opera and Lunascape. If you look at websites, you use a browser. In my class, I recommend people use Mozilla Firefox. “Mozilla” is the company; “Firefox” is the product.
I recommend people use Firefox because it is, if properly configured, the safest browser to use. Yes, I know there are “studies” showing other browsers to be the safest, but I am not convinced of the thoroughness or objectivity of those studies. Companies like Google and Microsoft will always hype their products as being the best, but, when it comes to down-in-the-trenches computer guys like me, guys who deal with Internet security and messed up computers day in and day out, there is one product that you will almost always find installed on our computers: Firefox.
Before I get into the details of using Firefox, please allow me to clear the air about something.
Foxfire was the title of a series of books about mountain living and folklore, published in the 1970s. Foxfire was also the name of a cheesy teen angst movie made in 1996.
Firefox is the name of the world’s best web browser. Why people want to call it Foxfire is beyond me. Just remember: Firefox, Firefox, Firefox, not “Foxfire.” Thank you.
Download Firefox at mozilla.com. Double-click your downloaded file and Firefox will install. Once installed, there are a few things I like to configure for safety and usability. First, if the installed version does not show the Menu bar, I like to turn it on by clicking the Firefox tab at the top and clicking Options and Menu Bar, so it shows a checkmark.
Next, I go to Tools/Options/Privacy and check “Tell websites I do not want to be tracked.” The rest of the settings are (A) Pick “Firefox will use Custom Settings.” (B) Uncheck “Always Use Private Browsing.” (C) Select “Don’t remember download or search/form history.” (D) Accept cookies from sites; third-party cookies: keep until I close Firefox. (E) Clear history when Firefox closes; “Settings,” check everything. (F) Security tab: do not remember passwords. (G) Add the “lock” symbol to Firefox by installing Padlock 0.5.0, found at addons.mozilla.org
While there are other Firefox tweaks and addons for more hard-core security buffs, the settings listed above provide excellent security for most users. Next week, we’ll look at one security product everyone should use, no matter what browser they have: Web of Trust.