How do you manage certificates in Firefox?

Originally posted on 04/28/2011 at lubbockonline.com

Yesterday I talked about what website certificates are. Today I'm talking about what you can do to control the certificates in your browser. It's not difficult, but it can take a bit of searching. We'll start with Firefox. If the post is too long Internet Explorer will be tomorrow. Maybe we can hit Safari and Opera after that.

Firefox 4 and Firefox 3 are exactly the same except for the very first step.

Firefox 4

Firefox 3

Go to the Firefox menu - options - options. The Options dialog will pop up.

Click on the 'Advanced' tab, then click on the "View Certificates" button.

Every browser has over a hundred recognized certificate authorities. It's hard to know which ones you really need and which ones you don't, but if you live in the U.S. it's probably safe to remove the certificate from TurkTrust. It's a Turkish certificate authority, and unless you visit Middle Eastern or Turkish websites, you probably won't encounter many sites using it. Once you've selected the certificate you can click on one of the buttons at the bottom of the window to view the details of the certificate, edit the trust level, export the certificate or delete it.

You can look through the certificates in your browser and do a little online research to decide which ones you think you can get rid of. If you want you can search online for certificate authorities to add, although there's not much reason for most people to add certificates unless they need to add one to access the internet through a proxy server. That's something you don't usually have to worry about unless your job requires it.

Private browsing really isn't

Originally published 3/29/11 on lubbockonline.com/glasshouses

Do you use the private browsing feature of your browser? Though they may have different names for it, the major browsers all have some type of private browsing available. All of them do pretty much the same thing. From the description of Private Browsing in Opera:

Private tabs

To browse without leaving any trace of the websites you visit, you can use a private tab. This is especially useful if you are using someone else's computer, or planning a surprise that you want to keep secret. When you close a private tab, the following data related to the tab is deleted:

• browsing history
• items in cache
• cookies
• logins

It looks really good - but your browser isn't the only thing gathering info about you on the web. The explanation given on Google Chrome's private browsing page is pretty clear:

Browsing in incognito mode only keeps Google Chrome from storing information about the websites you've visited. The websites you visit may still have records of your visit. Any files saved to your computer will still remain on your computer.

For example, if you sign into your Google Account on http://www.google.com while in incognito mode, your subsequent web searches are recorded in your Google Web History. In this case, to prevent your searches from being stored in your Google Account, you'll need to pause your Google Web History tracking.

If you're using private browsing it will protect you from people finding out what you're doing online by checking your browser, but it won't protect you from the data and logs kept by the your ISP, the ous servers your data travels through, and of course, the sites you visit. Private browsing isn't really private except on the computer the browser is running on.

IE9 and Firefox will have "Do not track" features

The upcoming versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox will include "Do Not Track" capabilities, but the way they do it is quite different. IE uses blacklisting, which will work, at least for a while. Firefox is implementing a header that will be sent to sites to tell them you don't want to be tracked. Which will work as long as enough sites agree to support the header.

The Mozilla blog gives a little more information on the "Do not track" header and links to another blog with more technical information on the "Do not track" header.

Ed Bott of ZDNet.com gives a very good explanation of how "Do not track" works in IE. It is part of a series of blags on internet tracking.

"Do Not Track" needs to be done. But I am concerned that these measures are being done without regard to the far reaching effects of blocking tracking and ads. Much of the free information on the internet is paid for by gathering information on the people who visit websites. Cutting off that revenue stream cold turkey could completely change the face of the internet, causing sites to go out of business or change business models radically. Privacy and control over information about us is extremely important, but we have to be careful we don't shoot ourselves in the foot trying to fix our problem.

Mozilla announces "Do not track" feature in Firefox

Mozilla has announced that they will include a "do not track" feature in Firefox 4.1 in response to the FTC's call for the one. Google and Microsoft have also announced "do not track" features, but Firefox 4.1 will probably be released first.

It's a nice first step, or maybe a nice gesture. If the tracking companies don't agree to honor the do-not-follow requests of the browsers, nothing will change, and tracking will be business as usual. Right now no tracking company has agreed.

In reality, though, it may be too late for "do not track." We enjoy a mostly free web surfing experience. "Do not track" could be the end of that. A lot of the free sites that we enjoy are paid for by information gathered while we surf and used to help better target ads at us. Remove that source of revenue and the sites have a choice. Charge for service, or go away. How much would you pay a month for what is now free on ESPN.com. How about Youtube? ? Facebook?

We should control who gathers data on us, how data about us is gathered, and who is doing the gathering. But we have allowed things to get way out of hand. Tracking is central to doing business on the internet and cannot be removed without replacing the revenue it generates (directly and indirectly) unless you want to see a lot of online businesses go under.