Open Source Fact and Fiction

Alan Shimel

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Make Facebook, Twitter and other sites more secure with HTTPS Everywhere

New Firefox plugin allows you to encrypt all communication with Facebook, Twitter and other popular sites

By Alan Shimel on Mon, 06/21/10 - 1:43pm.

. What's this?

A new plugin for Firefox from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and The Tor Project allows you to encrypt all of the information you send to popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter and other popular sites. This means any information you send will be encrypted in transit and fairly safe from snooping and sniffing. The plugin is called HTTPS Everywhere.

Of course you will have to use the Firefox browser in order to take advantage of this capability. There is a similar extension for Chrome called KB SSL Enforcer, but it does not appear to work as well, at least according to the HTTPS Everywhere folks.

By their own admission, the creative inspiration for HTTPS Everywhere came from Google's announcement about encrypted search options. This allows you to encrypt your Google search requests to keep them away from prying eyes as well.

While HTTPS Everywhere works with sites such as:

Google Search
Wikipedia
Twitter
Facebook
The New York Times
The Washington Post
Paypal
EFF
Tor
Ixquick

You should not take for granted it will work with all sites, nor even all of the ones listed here. Always check to be sure if the Firefox lock is closed or for some other indication that full encryption is indeed present.

Now, while encryption is no guarantee that you are secure, it certainly helps. If you can send your information encrypted, you probably should. So if you are a Firefox user, give it a whirl.

I should mention the plugin is in beta. Would be interested in the feedback of anyone using it.

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About Open Source Fact and Fiction

As co-founder and Managing Partner at The CISO Group, Alan Shimel is responsible for driving the vision and mission of the company. The CISO Group offers security consulting and PCI compliance management for the payment card industry. Prior to The CISO Group, Alan was the Chief Strategy Officer at StillSecure. Shimel was the public persona of StillSecure as it grew from start up to helping defend some of the largest and most sensitive networks in the world.

Shimel is an often-cited personality in the technology community and is a sought-after speaker at industry and government conferences and events. His commentary about the state of security, open source and life is followed closely by many industry insiders via his blog and podcast, "Ashimmy, After All These Years" (www.ashimmy.com). Alan is now also a regular contributor to The CISO Group’s security.exe blog and podcast.

Alan has helped build several successful technology companies by combining a strong business background with a deep knowledge of technology. His legal background, long experience in the field, and New York street smarts combine to form a unique personality.

Disclosure: The CISO Group sells a software-as-a-service PCI compliance application called SAQPro. The company is independent and does not represent any other vendor's products as a reseller.

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