A reader wrote me to ask if I would use a web proxy anonymizer service. I wrote back to tell him that my answer was a simple “No.”

It boils down to two things: (1) if you’re afraid of a web site operator knowing who you are, you shouldn’t be going to the web site, and (2) think of a web proxy anonymizer as handing all your web traffic to an intermediate stop on the way to and from your web destination.

I know nothing specific about the particular proxy service he mentioned. My comments below are general comments about the capabilities of proxies, even ones providing their service to anonymize your web surfing, and are not an accusation of improper behavior by any of them or any particular one.

In normal Internet use, different data packets to and from your computer and your web destination can take different routes from your computer to the destination.

Continue reading To Use a Web Proxy Anonymizer or Not…

First, let’s be very clear. Google’s new web browser “Chrome,” which you can download via the link Google’s main search page at www.google.com — is a Beta version — an unfinished version that is being released to the public so they can help find the bugs before the official release.

Tech Tip
A beta version of software is an unfinished version of software that is released to a large group of testers (sometimes the public) for testing, in order to help identify any bugs that still exist.

Chrome is not finished. It is not bug free. It is not free from security problems. The whole purpose of a beta release is to get more people trying to use it in order to find the bugs. Use it at your own risk.

If you are considering trying Chrome, or even starting to regularly use Chrome, I strongly urge you to carefully read the Google Chrome Terms of Service, which you have to accept in order to download the Chrome Beta.

Continue reading Google’s Chrome Web Browser (beta)

Opera was the first web browser to offer its users multiple tabs, so that we could have multiple web pages open within one browser window. Well, I think it was the first — it was certainly the first one I found. I loved that feature.

The latest browser to add tabs is Internet Explorer 7, which has implemented tab functions similar to those of Opera, and only a small portion of the functionality that Firefox has.

In IE7, if you hover over a link or bookmark and click your mouse’s scroll button, the new link will open in a new tab. That’s the same thing that happens in Opera. It also happens in Firefox, but Firefox can do more, too.

Continue reading Using Multiple Tabs in Firefox

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Panda Software, makers of the Panda Antivirus program, has started a free online antivirus scan called ActiveScan.

As implied by the name, it uses ActiveX, so you have to use Internet Explorer to use this scanner.

Read more in Free Online Antivirus Scan