Below are 3 browser extensions that will help streamline your internet browsing for people who ... Dont want advertisements are experiencing lag/stutters when loading pages Dont want their browsing habits tracked via ad-trackers installed covertly on almost every website (including grasscity) Want all of their browsing habits to be encrypted Frequently experience "This content is not available in your country" messages on youtube, facebook, vimeo etc. for starters if you are using firefox or internet explorer, join the modern age and upgrade to either Opera or Chrome. Opera is more lightweight and a lot better as of late. Chrome kind of went to shit tbh. Opera also accepts 100% of chrome extensions. The extensions you are going to want to download are called Adblock (just adblock, not adblock pro, not adblock plus, fucking ADBLOCK) here is a link to the opera market page Install that shit and tell ads to fuck off. Step 1, done. Step 2; download the extension "Disconnect". <<<< here is a link to their website. Install it. Every page you visit will automatically have the advertising trackers blocked on it. nothing more needs to be done once you install it for your browser. Step 3 (optional); Another extension i've found is called ZenMate... here is a link to their mainpage. It is a FREE browser extension VPN (proxy). Essentially, it takes all of your BROWSER browsing data and encrypts it, just as a website proxy would. The only difference is that it doesn't completely cripple website functionality like a webpage proxy would. Using this extension will end up with your real IP being reported as something that it isn't to all websites you visit, for instance, each day or so ZenMate usually has me on a new IP out of Washington (you can choose other countries if you like( this is how you avoid the "this content is not available in your country messages on youtube)) ... this is good if you enjoy being semi anonymous on the internet. This extension has not slowed down my internet speed at all.. i can stream twitch.tv or youtube in full 1080p with no connectivity issues. I have however noticed that ZenMate occasionally disagrees with various websites/video players.. when I notice that I just disable it for the time I'm on that website and go back to enabling it when I'm off it. Keep in mind that ZenMate does not encrypt your internet data unless that data is coming from your internet browser. If you use public wifi, or any wifi that isn't coming from your own home.. I HIGHLY suggest using ZenMate.. or something similar. its like hooking up with a stripper, you dont want your donger to touch that shit unless its wrapped up. The same idea applies to public wifi usage. if anyone has any questions or problems just comment and I'll help you sort it out. I've been using these 3 extensions in combination with eachother for a while now. My internet browsing has been very smooth. here is what my browser looks like with all 3 installed from left to right my extensions are... Twitch Now, Adblock, ZenMate and Disconnect.
Everyone should know about Adblock. Ghostery is good I've been using it for awhile. I will have to check out Zenmate too.
Thanks for the extension advice. I'll have to check out ghostery and Zenmate. just recently got rid of adblock because I don't mind the 10 second ad on my youtube videos.
In my experience Adblock plus & adblock pro are less consistent in blocking ads. Adblock has better & more lightweight UI and more in depth options for tweaking. ADP/AB+ also enable "non intrusive" ads by default on install.
Thanks for the informative post, and that hooker metaphor had me cracking up. Of course I already have Adblock but the browser VPN is something I'm very interested in. I'll be looking into both of those extensions.
Here's mine, IIIIIIIII, Adblock Plus Ghostery Facebook Disconnect HTTPS-Everywhere NoScript Self-Destructing Cookies + Paid VPN (unlimited speeds, P2P, internet kill switch, servers in 20+ countires, "no logging", held in high regard) + Firewall & paid antivirus Also, for Ghostery, you can just have it disable all listed trackers in their library and disable the pop-up bubble so you don't constantly see it. This combination with NoScript is perfect. You might only face difficulty when using social media sharing buttons or widgets, in which case, enable them in options. I still prefer Firefox also, I don't know why you think it is outdated, when it is updated frequently and can be modified extensively in the about:config page.
I've just made the switch from Ghostery to Disconnect for that very reason, it breaks some site functionality if you block all things it offers. Check out "Disconnect" extension as a ghostery replacement. Disconnect only blocks ad trackers and social media stuff. Edited OP with Disconnect instead of Ghostery. as for chrome vs firefox vs opera... I switched from firefox to chrome like a year ago because it was just flat out better. I dont really care about all the config things you can do in FF because at the end of the day whatever you may tinker with in there will save an unnoticeable amount of rendering time and anything customizable I may want to change I'll just do through extensions. Chrome offered better and more lightweight performance back about a year ago.. then it got worse and worse and now I'm using Opera because its basically Chrome without all the bloated-ness. I can't see myself going back to FF to be honest. Obviously if thats your thing tho, go for it. I dont care for NON-IOS phones for the same reason; I just use my phone because its sturdy, looks great and does what I need it to. I'm not really into it for all of the customizations and tinkering things. I'm currently testing uBlock as an Adblock replacement. It reportedly is about 1/5th the resources used as Adblock. Will report back in a few days on its adblocking abilities.
I feel you, firefox is a resource hog and may very well be sub optimum. I haven't tried opera, but I might use it on my other (severely outdated) laptop. Thanks for the recommendations. I look forward to hearing about uBlock. So far I haven't had any problems with Adblock. The only real problem I have with ghostery is sometimes loading imgur pictures, or comments for sites (which I usually avoid with good reason). Another annoying thing is trying to watch SouthPark from the German website (US website blocks VPNs). I have to essentially disable all add-ons and then go back to the site. Maybe I will just use Opera for deliberate browsing and Firefox for surfing.
Ever since I installed Zenmate whenever I google something it takes me to Goolge.tr (Turkey)...it's kind of annoying. I'm sure why it's doing this because I'm using the American server.
Ditto. IIRC, At first it was .tr and also in a language other than EN, but now its .tr and in english so I just dont care about it anymore. You could try out some of the other free browser VPN extensions and see if it persists across extensions, report back if you try any others out DotVPN Browsec Cyberghost after doublechecking mine doesn't ALWAYS send me to a google.tr site. Just did a few google searches through my address bar and it was the normal .com EN website
yea if i do the search through my address bar is goes to .com but if i do it through the search bar it goes to .tr guess i'll just deal with it
Just started using opera again due to this thread. However I run into the issue of needing to click-2-run flash player. Know of a way around this?
tor browser... https only , key paired emails, unscripted , varying ip address, no history, no dump files on your computer, portable, comes with a decent vpn , runs off a pgp setup, the list of security rolls thru my max limit so ill stop there.. its my prefered choice ... it seems to be semi nsfw tho ... depending on their firewall and your ability to run a usb browser ... look into it https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en heres the site.. i dont condone any illegal activity on it so if you participate in the illegal stuff on their and get into trouble do to your settings being wrong then its not my fault ... but it is 100% secure if you are set up correctly .. runs low cpu and mem .. more stable than most browsers as far as crashes... similar add ons .. remake of FF so its familiar... stay https only ... most http wont even work on it since its mean to keep you secure.. i run it with kleopatra , claws-mail, and a few others..
If you have Chome and an Android phone (maybe it works with other shit, I don't know) check out Push Bullet. Easiest way I've found of sending shit back and forth between my computer and my phone. I used to have the free Dropbox trial to send the pictures I take on my phone to my computer but I'm not about to pay $10 a month for that shit, so I started using Push Bullet. Now I can just pick a picture on my phone and "push" it to Chrome. I always type out grocery lists in a notepad file on my computer, now I can just type it out in my browser and push my grocery list to my phone without having to type it out all over again in my note apps. It's super neato.
sounds good for windows users. I used to email shit to myself to get files on different platforms.. lol.. super ghetto But now us apple supreme beings have AirDrop as a native app on both IOS and OSX Superfast and easy file transfer with no file size limits..
That's what I use to do too. Email myself a picture I wanted... now I can just hit "push to Chrome" or whatever and suddenly it's there on my browser. You can also allow it to sync texts and alerts and shit to your browser, so if my phone is in another room on the charger and I get a text, I'll get a popup on my computer of the text and I can reply to it from my computer too which is super convenient. So many times I'm sitting here on the computer and hear a sound on my phone like "oh I should see what that is" but then it pops up on my computer "so and so sent you a game request" or whatever and I know I can fucking ignore it Or else my husband is at work and my phone is in the bedroom on the charger and he texts me and I hear it and think "oh I better go check that" but I don't have to because it pops up on Chrome and lets me reply too! So cool. We're living in the future you guys.
I use Waterfox and Nightly but I've been meaning to set up Chromium. In my experience scripts feel a lot less stable on Chrome. I also prefer open source.