THE RIGHT BROWSER

Which is the safest way to browse the web: Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox? According to the blog “How to Geek,” Edge has a slight edge. Many say Firefox has the last word on privacy and we find that’s it pretty private.

In 2015, Firefox instituted “tracking protection.” It removes all tracking elements from pages you visited using the “private browsing” feature. To use private browsing in Firefox, hold down the “Cntrl” (or “Cmd” on the Mac) and the “Shift” key. Then tap the “P” (for private) key.

It was news to us that advertisers and websites can track you in Google or Microsoft’s browsers even if you use the “incognito” or “InPrivate” modes. All those modes do is prevent your browsing history, cookies and cached data from being stored on your computer. You’re still tracked, unless you use Firefox.

We don’t care if we’re tracked, because it means we’ll see ads targeted to our interests. Of greater concern are viruses and hackers. Microsoft and Google use what’s called a “sandboxso that each component of your browser is kept separate, making it hard for a hacker to join them together. Firefox has over 18,000 “extensions,” which are apps that live in the browser. As you might expect, sandboxing all of them has been a problem. They’re still working on it. Google has over 50,000 and managed to do it.

The only reason Microsoft Edge might be considered slightly safer than Google Chrome is that it keeps a better list of bad websites, making sure you steer clear of those. However, this shouldn’t matter if you use anti-virus and anti-malware software.

Unusual Web Browsers

And now for something completely different … There’s much more out there than you can ever find time for:

Opera Mini. For smartphones and tablets, Opera Mini claims to save up to 90 percent of data costs; we saved 50 percent. It also blocks ads and makes multi-tasking a breeze. In our tests, it was just as fast and lovely as any browser, even when watching a movie.

ScienceDirect,for phone, tablet or computer. Browse through the titles of 14,324,115 journal and book articles on just about any scientific research topic you can think of. Shouldn’t take you more than a few decades. See anything you like? “Open access” books and articles are free, others are $35.

Torch” is a favorite of video pirates. (Computer only.) Has a built-in feature for downloading music and video from YouTube and Vimeo. Uses Bit Torrent for rapid downloading of videos. Has lots of games.

Beware the Mac App Store

If you use a Macbook, you’ve probably noticed apps for sale in the App Store; scammers lurk there.

The most benign offer to sell you something you can already get for free, such as the online version of Microsoft Word. The worst install malware on your system. Look out for apps offering Microsoft templates. Get those for free at Templates.Office.com. For other apps in the Mac App Store, look at reviews. Often, the first few are phony. Scroll past those to see what victims are saying.

NOTE: This sort of thing goes back many years, in fact for all of the 36 years we’ve been writing this column. An easy way to get a product to sell is to find one that already exists for free and offer it for a price. We have seen this done with bundles of free programs as well as single ones. Take a look at Ninite.com for totally free programs.

Speeding up Your Computer

If your Windows 10 computer is running slowly, open Windows’ “Task Manager” or the “Task Manager” in your web browser.

There are at least three ways to get to the Windows task manager. Bob uses “Ctrl-Alt-Del.” That means holding down the “Ctrl” and “Alt” keys on your keyboard and tapping the delete key. (“Ctrl-Shift-Esc” also works.) Or, right-click the taskbar at the bottom of your screen and choose “Task manager.” Each item on the list that comes up under “more details” is one of the processes or programs running in the background and almost certainly slowing you down.

Joy’s computer is often running at 99 percent of its brain chip’s capacity, so clicking “task manager” is an everyday thing for her. When Bob checked the brain on his PC, it was running at just three percent of capacity. (He says that fits well with his own brain activity.) Recently, a “speech engine” was hogging the lion’s share of Joy’s computer’s resources. Since she hadn’t been talking to Cortana (Window’s voice assistant) lately, she clicked it and chose “end task.” We also shut down “Microsoft Search Protocol Host.”

But it could be that having too many tabs open in your web browser is the culprit. Rather than shutting them all down, find out which one is the resource hog. In Google Chrome, look for the three vertical dots in the upper right corner of the screen. Click “more tools,” and then “task manager.” When we did this, we noticed one website was the real pig. So we closed that tab. Or rather, Joy did. Bob tends to be a one-tab-at-a-time kind of guy. (You can do something similar in Firefox with an add-on.)

Chrome also has a “reset” button. Type chrome://settings in the search bar and when you get to settings, type “reset settings.” You can bring Chrome back to its original state. It keeps your bookmarks but gets rid of the junk that bogs you down.

Internuts

MyReps.Datamade.us will tell you the names of all your political representatives, right down to the local sheriff. Next to each name is a “contact” button. There are also links to their websites, Twitter, and Facebook pages.

Step into a Miniature World of Paper.” Search on that phrase to find a National Geographic video full of leaping and flying paper creatures. It’s origami gone wild.

Cute Animal Tweet Off.” Search on that to find a Mashable article with cute baby animal photos.

Comments are closed.