FireFoxers stay secure with HTTPS Everywhere

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FireFoxers stay secure with HTTPS Everywhere

#1 Grinler

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Posted 15 July 2010 - 04:57 PM

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released a new Firefox addon called HTTPS Everywhere that forces Firefox to encrypt your communications via SSL (https://) when communicating with certain sites. This will allow you to transmit data to any of these sites securely and privately.

HTTPS Everwhere was originally created to communicate with Google's new encrypted search option, but was further enhanced to force Firefox to use other sites https:// connection. These sites are:

Google Search
Wikipedia
Twitter and Identi.ca
Facebook
EFF and Tor
Ixquick, DuckDuckGo, Scroogle and other small search engines

So for those Firefox users who want a secure and private connection, check out HTTPS Everywhere. Has been working great for me.

Link: Encrypt the Web with the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox Extension

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#2 ozhawk

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Posted 17 July 2010 - 04:25 PM

Hi. I hate to be just totally dense here, but I clicked on and saved this add on (?) to my desktop. I am unsure what to do with it at this point. Could you possibly elighten me as to what to do with this? (I also checked the add ons in FireFox, but did not find any mention of this).

Signed
Totally Lost.....as usual

#3 tg1911

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Posted 17 July 2010 - 11:34 PM

It should be listed in your Add-ons list, under the Extensions tab:

Posted Image

Do you get any type of error message?
Have you tried it again?

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#4 Romeo29

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Posted 18 July 2010 - 05:37 AM

When you click on the add-on the XPI file link, Firefox does not ask you to save the file. Firefox asks you if you want to install this add-on.

Here are more links about HTTPS everywhere :
Force Firefox to use HTTPS
YouTube video for HTTPS Everywhere by TEKHD

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#5 boethe

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Posted 18 July 2010 - 06:15 AM

Totally annoyed my wife by installing this on her laptop; it seems chat is disabled in Facebook when you use a HTTPS connection. The good thing is that HTTPS Everywhere has options control and you can select which applications it secures; deselecting Facebook from the list reestablished her ability to chat in Facebook.

#6 tg1911

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Posted 18 July 2010 - 04:15 PM

boethe, on Jul 18 2010, 06:15 AM, said:

Totally annoyed my wife .....

Isn't that what husbands are for? :thumbsup:

#7 Orange Blossom

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Posted 18 July 2010 - 06:05 PM

It appears as though it is still in Beta mode.

Quote

Today EFF and the Tor Project are launching a public beta . . .

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/06/encry...refox-extension

~ OB

This post has been edited by Orange Blossom: 18 July 2010 - 06:06 PM

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#8 tg1911

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Posted 18 July 2010 - 07:58 PM

The article was written a month ago; June 17th, 2010.
Can't find a current status on it, anywhere.
I've been using it for 4 weeks now, and haven't experienced any problems.

#9 Broni

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Posted 18 July 2010 - 11:39 PM

I hate to say, but I installed it this morning and it slowed down my browsing speed a lot.
Some pages wouldn't load at all.

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#10 cryptodan

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Posted 19 July 2010 - 05:19 AM

Id like to add that Google is already using HTTPS as seen via here: https://www.google.com/ It prevents sites from gathering information on where you came from and who referred you their site.

Whats the CPU overhead for running this add on?

What Certificates does this Add/On use? Should the Certs be trusted?

This post has been edited by cryptodan: 19 July 2010 - 05:21 AM

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#11 Romeo29

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Posted 19 July 2010 - 10:14 AM

Quote

It prevents sites from gathering information on where you came from and who referred you their site.

No. You connect to a web site through many middle computers. Any of these computers can see the data being transferred. When you use HTTPS the data is encrypted and only you and Google can see the actual data. It prevents any middle person to eavesdrop the data being transferred between you and the Google site.

To find out how many middle servers you have to go through to connect to a web site (e.g. google), type tracert www.google.com in the command prompt.

CPU overhead? I think there is no extra CPU overhead.

Certificates? This add-on just redirects you to the HTTPS version of the target site (if available). For example, if you type http://www.google.com, it will redirect you to https://www.google.com. The certificates used by the target web sites are checked by the browser itself. The add-on does not use any certificates.

This post has been edited by Romeo29: 19 July 2010 - 10:17 AM

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#12 chrissy1973

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Posted 20 July 2010 - 09:44 PM

boethe, on Jul 18 2010, 07:15 AM, said:

Alternatively, you can let it secure Facebook and install Digsby, which is a chat client that you can use for Facebook, yahoo, aim, etc. I've used it since it first came out and it's a great program.

Chrissy1973