Firefox have come up with a very interesting idea, making use of the database at Have I Been Pwned to display an in-browser warning message when you visit a site which has suffered a data breach. This reminder may help with one of the largest problems with internet security; the limited amount of damage a company experiences when their customers data is stolen. When a major breach like the ones at Equifax, Yahoo or even that certain adultery site occur, they are covered in the news for a few days, maybe a week, and then everything goes back to normal for them as the vast majority of the population forgets it happened. With this add-in to Firefox there will be a constant reminder that breaches have occurred and that perhaps an alternative would be a better choice than to continue to work with a company that has allowed your data to be stolen. Since the courts do not seem interested in handing out prohibitive fines to businesses which fail to protect their customers data, this might be a way to convince them investing in security makes financial sense. Drop by Slashdot for a brief look at the plan.
"The alert also includes an input field. In the add-ons current version this field doesn't do anything, but we presume it's there to allow users to search and see if their data was exposed during that site's security breach. Troy Hunt, Have I Been Pwned's author has confirmed his official collaboration with Mozilla on this feature."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Startup Demonstrates ReRAM Retention, Endurance @ EE Times
- Black Friday: INQ's guide to the best deals, bargains and free stuff @ The Inquirer
- Guidemaster: Want an Alexa device? Here’s every Amazon Echo, compared @ Ars Technica
- 'We Are Disappointed': Tech Companies Speak Up Against the FCC's Plan To Kill Net Neutrality @ Slashdot
- Intel is dropping support for legacy BIOS @ The Inquirer
- The Official Project CARS 2 Demo Is Now Available @ TechARP
- Microsoft to run VMware on Azure, on bare metal. Repeat. Microsoft to run VMware on Azure. @ The Register
- KitGuru Reader Awards 2017 – Winners Announced!
What they need is a Report
What they need is a Report button on Firefox where users can report abusive ads right when the user visits the website! So for ads that cover the page or eat too much processing cycles and such, right click over the ad and report that ad via Firefox to a database of abusive ad/ad provider server addresses.
Hell Firefox should bake into its web browser some Functionality to wrap all the ad content on a web page in an enclosed web control that displays a close button next to each ad so that the user is able to press close to disable the ad/ads from running in the browser, including any ad scripts that turn the ad’s HTML defined/laid-out client area into a slide show of ads/ad videos. The close button can be used cause the ad to be closed and its scripts/ad pushing server functionality to be stopped functioning, also with ad script flushed so more ads can not be pushed out in that HyperText defined client area.
That way any abusive Ad/Ad scripts can be flagged by the browser’s users and those ad server addresses can be marked in a centrilized abusive ad database for in browser ad blocking the next time the web page is accessed. Put all scripted content in a brower generated close/disable box by allowing firefox to modify the web page elements and users able to tell the difference between elements for content from elements that are ad/ad script driven and allow the users to flag any abusive ad/ad scripts including the ad partners’ server addresses that are pushing out abusive/disruptive ad content.
My antivirus/firewall software already has browser add on functionality for blocking known websites with vurlenabilities including Google Searches being tagged with Red/Orenge flags in the Google search results. But all web browsers need to begin wrapping ads in some extra HTML5 tags added to the webpages to allow the users to close and report abusive ads to a centrilized database and help put an end to thoes abusive ads and ad scripts.
Users should be able to right click over an ad and have a modal menu that allows the users to query the ad’s resources usage on the user’s computer listed including processing cycles and space used by the ad and its client/server as well as net connection usage statistics like bandwidth/data usage.
Really all that scripting functionality is being so abused that browsers need a top level button to disable all scripting if that website is taking excessive resources on folks computers. So the user can toggle on and off any browser based scripting and running scripts coming from some websites.
Firfox should also allow users to rate poorely designed websites like ExtremeTech/other Ziff Davis websites that are so poorly designed that all the vertical screen space is taken up by the web page’s poor design. So bad are these websites that there is only a few inches of vertical space to read the content. WccfTech is also bad and its comments section regularly crashes my graphics drivers with all the content pushed out/linked to. So I have had to stop visiting, and it’s just for the freakshow and popcorn/beer entertainment value that I went there in the first place.