Anonymous Web Browsing with Tor and Firefox

Are you worried about online privacy? If so, you should check out Tor. It's basically a virtual network you can use to connect to online services without anyone knowing your identity. Cool, right?

Installation is really quite simple. For Windows users, just follow these instructions.

If you're using Firefox, you can install the Torbutton extension that allows you to switch from Tor to regular surfing with the click of a button. It's really that convenient.

The downside is that Tor is kind-of slow. Logically, it would be. You're sending your traffic across other people's network connections. However, if you're looking for anonymity, Tor might be a good choice.

Great Firefox Tip for Secure Browsing

I just ran across a great post at Lifehacker. It provides a quick tutorial on how to create and use multiple Firefox profiles, even simultaneously.

So why would you want to do this? Two important reasons: security and privacy.

Say you do online banking and bill paying. But you also do lots of other internet activities. You could keep better control over your passwords and bank web addresses by keeping them all in a separate Firefox profile. If you only use that profile for banking, it would theoretically expose your critical financial information to less of a security risk.

Another example where multiple profiles could be handy is for keeping your identities separate. Perhaps you use Gmail for your personal email, but you have a separate Gmail account that is linked to a Blogger blog. With multiple profiles, you can keep each account logged into Gmail in its own Firefox profile. Handy, right?

Error on Startup of New Laptop

You read that right. I got my brand spankin' new Dell Inspiron E1405 two days ago. I started it up, and I got a Windows error. I can't even remember what it was, but it annoyed the heck out of me.

Luckily, I figured out that it was some problem between Internet Explorer and Google Toolbar. Shame on you, Google!

I guess that's just another reason to use Firefox.