What browser?

I got an email from a customer and believe my reply might be of interest to many people. The customer quoted an article from another blog(?) that recommended to search directly out of the URL field. Here is my reply verbatim as I sent it:

The crux with all these "easy" tips is that they all play right into the industry's game.

The more searches any given search engine gets to perform the more money they can ask for their aggregated info on what we search for. The search engine companies may not directly advertise to us but the companies that buy this aggregated search information can then advertise better and more directly to us.

• It's a fact that Bing and Yahoo (they use Bing) do NOT show us what in the search results are paid advertisements.
• It's a fact that way too many advertisements get abused to get malicious programs on our computers.
• It's a fact that some web browsers (like IE and Edge, both from Microsoft!) make it very difficult or don't allow us at all to suppress advertisements.
• It's a fact that Google does not allow us to suppress certain advertisements in Google's own Chrome browser.

All the before said and more is behind my STRONG recommendation to use only Firefox as I set it up for my customers.

And I urge my customers to search ONLY out of the little browser specific Search window:

because when you search from there you get a Google search result

MINUS any advertisement(s),
PLUS the red, yellow and green Web of Trust ratings right by every search result.
AND your search with Google has happened anonymously!

Update Jan. 10th 2017:
Sadly around November 5th 2016 Mozilla, the organization that supplies Firefox and Google have removed that piece of code from their download pages; some details are here.
If you remove the WOT extension or add-on from your Firefox browser it currently can not be re-installed!
Google recently made the WOT extension available again.

If that is not reason enough for any of my customers it's their decision and their money if I have to clean up their machine again.

 Stay safe!

Beware the Tricks When Updating to Windows 8.1

Oct. 26, 2013 Important Update: Please pay attention to the text after #6 and #7 below.

Just to have it done I decided today to update a customer's system from Windows 8 to 8.1. A few things caught my attention:

Depending in the speed of your internet connection and on the speed with which Microsoft delivers the download brace yourself for anything between 15 minutes and one to three hours - just for the download.

The installation speed will depend mainly an how fast your computer is and how fast or slow your disk drive is; it will take anything from 20 minutes to an hour or even more.

Microsoft came up with new tricks to get you to set up a Microsoft Account. BEWARE! I simply left the fields for name, email address and so on empty and clicked Next. Totally not intuitive but I got the old local account back. See below after #6.

The last of the preparation screens brought the surprise with the following six questions, all with ON (that is Yes, do it) preselected, quoted literally but emphasis added by yours truly:

1. Use Bing to get search suggestions ad web results in Windows Search, and let Microsoft use my search history, location, and some account info to personalize my experiences
    
2. In Internet Explorer, use page prediction to pre-load pages, which sends my browsing history to Microsoft
    
3. Let apps use my name and account picture
    
4. Let apps use my advertising ID for experiences across apps
    
5. Let Windows and apps request my location from the Windows Location Platform
    
6. Get better protection from malware by sending info and files to Microsoft Active Protection Service when Windows Defender is turned on.

Do I need to talk about the obvious privacy issues with points 1 through 5? I hope not...Needless to say, I set all switches for questions 1 through 5 to OFF.

Point #6 makes sense, we all need better malware protection. But at this point in an upgrade I would appreciate to have at least some sort of "What is that?" available to learn what info is reported to Microsoft. But no luck here, there is nothing of this kind.

By now I have updated two machines from Windows 8 to 8.1.

The first machine I updated was an OEM installation; this means that Windows 8 was installed and licensed by the manufacturer and delivered with the computer. The system was set up to work with a local account.

The second machine I updated was my own laptop that I always have with me on customer visits; it runs a retail copy of Windows 8, that is a copy I bought myself from Microsoft in the early days of Windows 8. This machine was set up to work with a local account as well.
 

To my surprise the second machine showed during the initial setup of Windows 8.1 two more windows. At that stage of operation I did not yet have a screen shot program available so I need to try to describe these windows verbally.

The first of these additional windows asked without any explanation for my email address, name and other IMHO personal information. I did not supply any information but "took the plunge" and just clicked Next.

The second screen then gave in small, easy to overlook lettering the option to "Continue with your local account". That was what I did and the machine works beautifully.

The text after #6 IMHO shows two things:

• Microsoft becomes ever more ruthless and blatant in trying to lure us into using a so called Microsoft Account. IMHO this is arm twisting!
   
• There is a functional difference between updating an OEM version and and a retail version of Windows 8. This is in opposition of what Microsoft people say in their company blogs.

If you have a metered internet connection with a cap on the volume of data per month then numbers 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 increase the risk of going over the data limit; and that gets expensaive really fast.

As usual I welcome suggestions and comments right here in the blog.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.
  

Bing Desktop in Windows Update . . .

. . . seems to be Microsoft's latest and (so far?) most desperate attempt to get you to use it's Bing search engine.

As another blog said:

... Bing Desktop, one of the most annoying apps you may install that isn't a virus.

I don’t use Bing very often. Neither does the majority of the Internet — a fact that must upset Microsoft. In the last 14 years, Google has snapped up the vast majority of the search market by being the fastest, cleanest, most accurate way to search. ...

Typically what I don't like about Microsoft: They act as if they know better how I want my desktop to look and that they know better what search engine I want to use and what I want my homepage to be.

That is preposterous to say the least, invasive and absurd; it is yet another Big Brother attitude of the worst kind!

So what does Bing Desktop do? It is nothing but a big and in my opinion ugly search box in the middle of the desktop. Plus they can show you varying desktop backgrounds and naturally they change your home page and your default search engine.

After the installation Bing Desktop gives you the choice of three options:

 

 In the default install naturally all three options are selected. My personal take on these options is so unfavorable that I better not say that here publicly.

Why does M$ (Microsoft) do that? Just look at Google; Google makes billions of $ with their search engine and M$ desperately wants to get a larger slice of that pie.

Enough ranting now. How do we get rid of it?

If you are still in Windows Update right click on the "Bing Desktop" update and then click on "Hide update".  

If Bing Desktop is already installed go to Control Panel, Programs and Features; find Bing Desktop in the list, highlight it and then click Uninstall to remove Bing Desktop.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

Click here for a categorized Table Of Contents.