FirefoxHi All, Welcome and thanks for visiting;

Recently I wrote a post on Facebook Security as part of a series of posts I am doing on Social Networks.

One of the comments received was from a good friend of mine Julie Dunlop from http://www.learn-grow-prosper.com/blog you see Julie had recently updated Firefox and noticed that the Firefox URL Scheme had changed and was not showing the http:// or the https:// in the address bar.

Well it just so happened that I had recently had the same issue when I updated my Firefox and to be honest I am now a lot more security conscious than I ever have been in the past, due to recent events with my blog, which I won’t go into here but suffice to say I wanted to see that I was using the secure https:// in the address bar. So I went about finding out how to address this issue and I found the solution to correct it and I want to share with you.

I could have written an instructional list to follow, but I thought it would be easier if I created a video showing you what to do and you could follow me through the steps, pausing the video when you need to as you carry out the steps!

This video shows you how to reinstate the “http:// or the https:// URL scheme name in the Firefox address bar following an update to the latest Firefox update (7.01) in which the URL scheme name (e.g. the “http://” part in a typical URL, like “http://www.google.com/“) was removed from most of the URLs. The result of this is that the address bar shows only partial information about the URL (e.g. showing only “www.google.com/” and not the desired “http://www.google.com/”

Although some users may not find this an issue I wanted to know (as I am now a more security conscious user) that I was in fact using https:// in the address bar, and I wanted it to display!

 

 

Force Firefox to use “HTTPS” on most web sites

For those of you who wish to you can force Firefox to use “https” on quite a few sites.

https is the secure version of the http protocol. If you open a web site which uses the https protocol, then all the data transfer between you and that site is encrypted. You can tell if a web site is using the https protocol by looking at that site’s address. If it starts with https:// then it is using the https protocol. For example, https://www.google.com/ uses the https protocol.

Browsing the Internet websites in https secure connection has been the increasingly popular trend of late in order to enhance security when surfing the net. Browsing the web in https connection ensures that the data traffic is encrypted and reduces the chance of being intercepted, hijacked or hacked.

Many websites now support secure https connection. However, not all websites force visitors to use encrypted secure https by default. Even if it is being used, the support may be limited where within encrypted pages, there are links and embedded objects which are using unencrypted http which can potentially bring about malicious content or adversaries that use active attacks or traffic analysis.

For Firefox users who want to ensure that they are browsing the web consistently in https secure connection whenever the website supports it, the HTTPS EVERYWHERE extension can automatically switch and rewrite all requests to supported sites to use the https protocol instead of HTTP when it’s detected.

Here’s how with HTTPS Everywhere!

1. Visit www.eff.org/https-everywhere from your Firefox web browser.

2. Click on the big blue box that says Install HTTPS Everywhere to download and install the Firefox add-on

Firefox https

3. After the installation is finished, restart Mozilla Firefox.

4.You can configure the HTTPS Everywhere add-on to set which web sites to force to use the HTTPS protocol. To do so, click Tools ? Add-ons in the menu bar. Then select the HTTPS Everywhere add-on and click on the Options button.

firefox-https-everywhere

5. In the Options window, you can select the sites on which you want to force the HTTPS protocol if possible.

 Firefox

 

HTTPS Everywhere is free and is a no-effort way to increase security while Browsing on the web. It’s invisible and works in the background, no configuration is required and you can Enable and Disable individual sites.

Finally before I sign off guy’s and girl’s I have something really cool to share with you; my good friend Adrienne Smith of http://adriennesmith.net is doing something really exciting on her blog; read on to learn more…..

There is a great giveaway taking place over at Adrienne Smith’s Blog.  If you missed out on getting CommentLuv Premium you now have a chance to win a free copy of this fabulous plug-in.  Want to participate?  Just visit Adrienne’s CommentLuv Premium giveaway post for more information.

I really hope you have found this post useful and if you have please do me a favour and help me spread the word by using the buttons below and share it for me please with your friends and readers!

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Until next time, Stay Safe and Secure Online and in Firefox!

 

 

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