The Internet is a dangerous place. Some companies are spying on you and, want to get as much of your private information as possible. What are your interests? What sites are you visiting? What can we sell you? Your information is the new gold.

As a countermeasure, a range of browser plugins has been developed to enhance your privacy by blocking information-gathering attempts. A few of the most common and well-known extensions are uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. These plugins all use Manifest V2, which grants them certain functionality and determines their permissions in the browser.

During the last few years, our internet has become more private and secure with encrypted traffic using SSL certificates. A certificate is used by the webserver to prove its authenticity on that domain and to set up a secure encrypted channel to the browser. When the traffic is encrypted, no one between the visitor and the server can look at the traffic and see what is being transmitted. Since we have this technology, we can use online banking, healthcare and communicate without spying eyes. 

When you browse around the web you are constantly being monitored. You can protect yourself a bit by using various browser add-ons like uBlock Origin (firefox, chrome), HTTPS Everywhere (firefox, chrome) and NoScript (firefox, chrome). But even by using these you will be still tracked – just calling a URL can be enough the deduct information about your behavior and who you are by using different browser finger printing techniques.

In October 2008 I joined Facebook and my first status update said “have given in to the facebook pressure..”. I was really late in joining because I didn’t really feel I had a reason to join and frankly I did not get the whole thing. But as soon as I joined I was hooked and found it a great way to connect with old lost friends and also find new ones. Now, a bit more than 10 years later and after wasting way to much time and energy, I am posting my final Facebook status update.