It seems people suddenly start to concern about their privacy. Do Not Track becomes a popular word, although most people do not really understand it. Even the politicians want to express their interest in solving this issue.  The White House last week unveiled a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights”.

Mozilla reminded us that they invented Do Not Track in February 2011. If it was Apple, it was probably patented already, and now everyone would have had to pay for it except Safari users (they already paid when they purchased the fruity toy). According to the official page:

Keep My Opt-Outs is an extension for users who aren’t comfortable with personalization of the

… Read the rest

The post Keep My Opt-Outs: Chrome has the Do Not Track option for long time appeared first on Safe Surfing.

After reading the part 1 of this guide, you installed the antivirus software (hopefully, it is Avast), you may still expose yourself to something named malware occasionally.

Malware includes all malicious software. Some examples are: computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, adware,  and rootkits. The purpose of malware is to steal some information from your computer or to gain unauthorized access of your computer. Normally, in the computer security industry, we classify them into virus and malware.

Just like antivirus software, there is anti-malware software. Most antivirus software has some capabilities to scan and remove malware, especially rootkits, worms and trojan horses. But for adware, spyware, most of the time, you need anti-malware software.

For anti-malware, I usually recommend the free Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free, … Read the rest

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In the DOS era, the computer virus was mainly spreading through floppy disks. At that time, it was cool to bring a box of floppy disks around, just like nowadays bringing an iPad around.

The ever-increasing threat of virus in the last 3 decades was the result of the dominance of  M$ Windows+ the proliferation of the Internet. The Internet is a good innovation: it changes the way how information is propagated, and make information sharing is so easy and fast. Unfortunately, it also accelerates the spreading of computer viruses. The security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows were, are and, will be the hotbed for computer viruses.

The dominance of Windows, as well its security vulnerabilities, will not change anytime … Read the rest

The post How to surf securely? Antivirus appeared first on Safe Surfing.

Some web proxy lists also have a Facebook fan page.  But these fan pages usually are not very active. This is probably due to the fact that the auto-posting to Facebook walls is not easy to integrate with the scripts used by major list providers.

Twitter is easier to integrate with most scripts. Unfortunately, if you search Twitter with “proxy”, or “web proxy”, you probably can only find some inactive accounts. This means it needs time for proxy list providers to build … Read the rest

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One of the major lists of new web proxies is proxy.org and unrestrictedsurf.com. Unfortunately, most of such list sites were blocked by some institutions totally. It means you even cannot access these sites at all.

There are several ways to solve this issue:

• Subscribe to the newsletter. Some list providers also send the latest proxy list through email. So, if you subscribe to such newsletters, you will get new lists from your email automatically, even you cannot access the list site itself. Unrestrictedsurf provides such emails through their Web Proxy List. (on the subscription page, you just select web proxy list

… Read the rest

The post Your proxy was blocked, so what? appeared first on Safe Surfing.

This is not true at all.

Firstly, the web proxy site still keeps a record of your activities. The logs usually can be used as court evidence. Basically, the server that hosts the web proxy sites, by default, will write some access info (usually, your IP, your OS, browser…) in the log file. It is up to the system administrator when to delete or how often to rotate (i.e., delete automatically after how many days) them.

Secondly, some client-side scripts (e.g,. JavaScript) may get your info. Most web proxy scripts (PHProxy, Glype) can re-write Java scripts to avoid information leakage, only to a certain extent. The deliberately-written scripts are hard to re-write. The only solution is to … Read the rest

The post How much can a web proxy protect your privacy? appeared first on Safe Surfing.

People are using web proxy mainly for the following 5 reasons:

• Bypass blocking. This blocking may be placed by your government, or your ISP, or your organization, or even your parents. The intention may be good if contents blocked are not suitable for your age or your religion. But some ISPs or organizations just subscribe to some third-party services and block sites blindly. To access such contents, the only way is to use a web proxy.  Arguing with your ISP to whitelist the blocked sites is usually just a waste of time.
• Surf anonymously. Netizens are more and more concerned about their privacy.  If an ad pops out telling you an event

… Read the rest

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