May 2015

The Internet is full of horror stories of children running up huge mobile phone bills. Whenever this happens, blame needs to be divided between parents, the companies that produce these games and apps, and providers.

You have plenty of options if you want to share files with friends on the web version of Facebook. The two core options the site provides are to share files using Facebook Chat and to post files to groups you are a member of.

For instance, you may upload the file to the Internet and share the link pointing to it in chat, or use one of the many apps that are available on the site to share files directly with other users.

The majority of things that happen when you load a website in your browser of choice happen in the background. Unless you have installed security extensions in the browser or software on the system, you may be completely unaware of the connections that are initiated when a page is loaded in the browser.

While you can check that manually using the browser's developer tools (hit F12 and switch to network for that), it is only displaying information to you while the page is loading.

The automatic installation of new plugins in the Firefox browser is a big privacy, security and stability issue that Mozilla has yet to address.

Considering that the organization has not addressed the issue yet even though it has been known for years, it is unlikely that a patch will land soon in a Firefox version that prevents the installation of new plugins or at least prompts the user on the next start of the browser before completing the installation.

Google Maps' directions feature works considerably well most of the time. It can be quite useful to plan a trip but also when you missed an exit or need to re-route, as it can update direction information based on your location or another location you specify.

While you do get traffic information when you use the directions feature, those were only displayed on the map itself but not when you were in the navigational mode it offers.

Remember GlassWire? The firewall for Windows launched backed in 2014 as a free beta version that featured a simple elegant interface that provided you with information about connections on the PC it was running on.

The firewall itself lacked some features. While it supported the blocking of programs for example, it did not offer the means to do so automatically.

Disk Sorter is a file classification software for Windows that analyzes directories to display statistical information about files they contain.

First thing you need to do after installation is to select one or multiple folders that you want analyzed.

For instance, if you want all local files to be included you pick all root drive letters of the system for that.

While that is useful, you may also use the software to analyze specific directories instead.

Back in 2010 I noticed that PayPal was loading content from paypal.112.2o7.net during connection to the site which was worrying at that time as there was no indication why a secure site would do this.

Most financial sites, online banks for instance, take security and privacy of their customers serious by loading contents only from company-owned domains.

Google Chrome offers barely any management features when it comes to tabs and windows that are open in the browser.

While it is fairly easy to create new windows and tabs, keeping an overview of everything that is open is quite tedious due to a lack of management options.

Spaces is a Google Chrome extensions that brings better tab and window management functionality to the web browser.

The extensions core features are the automatic recognition of all open tabs and windows, the saving and restoration of windows, and options to quickly switch between workspaces.

Mozilla launched Tracking Protection, a new feature to block trackers on the web automatically, in Firefox Nightly back in November 2014.

The feature, turned off by default, needs to be enabled before it becomes available in the browser. To do so, load about:config in the browser's address bar and hit enter, and confirm that you will be careful. Search for privacy.trackingprotection.enabled and double-click the preference to set it to true to enable it in the browser.