All web browsers now have a privacy feature called private browsing that lets you browse websites without your history being tracked locally on your computer. I’ve already written about how to enable private browsing on IE 11 and Microsoft Edge and in this article we’ll talk about Firefox.
Note that in Firefox, private browsing works a bit differently than other browsers. In addition to not recording your web browsing history, Firefox also enables tracking protection. This will block parts of sites that try to track your browsing history across multiple sites.
Ever visit a travel website to do some research on a vacation and then suddenly see ads for that same place while browsing other websites? That’s you being tracked as you browse. Firefox will prevent this when you are in private mode.
To enable private browsing in Firefox, click on the hamburger icon at the top right and then select New Private Window. You can also just use the CTRL + SHIFT + P keyboard shortcut.
You will be able to tell you are in private mode because of the mask located in the top right of the window.
You’ll also get a new window showing you what is saved and what is not saved while browsing in this mode. As with all private browsing, your activity is not tracked locally in your browser, but your ISP, employer or even software installed on your system can possibly track everything you are doing.
As mentioned earlier, tracking protection is enabled also, but can be turned off. By default, it uses the list provided by Disconnect, which is an online security and privacy product. Firefox uses the standard list, which blocks common advertising trackers, social sharing trackers and analytics trackers.
If you want even more protection, you can enable the strict protection list, which will block all trackers. The only issue with this is that it might break some sites since it blocks a lot of stuff. You can enable the stricter list by clicking on the hamburger icon, then clicking on Options and then going to Privacy.
Next to Use Tracking Protection in Private Windows, click on the Change Block List button.
Now go ahead and click on the Disconnect.me strict protection list and then click Save Changes. So what exactly does this do? Well, here’s an example of my own website below.
If you open up the web console, you’ll see exactly what resources get blocked. In my case, all the ads from Google are blocked, Kontera, the Google Analytics script, and Google+. Your browsing will definitely be faster and more private using this mode. Obviously, it hurts sites that make their money off ads like mine, but that’s your choice.
If you need to allow trackers on specific sites, you can click on the little shield icon in the address bar and then click on Disable protection for this session.
Finally, if you want to enable private browsing mode all the time in Firefox, you can do that by going to the same Privacy tab under Options and then choosing Never remember history next to Firefox will: under the History heading.
Choosing this option is the same as private browsing mode. The only difference is that you will not see that purple mask icon in the browser window. Firefox will have to restart in order for the changes to take effect. You can also click on Use custom settings for history and then check the Always use private browsing mode box.
This is exactly the same as choosing Never remember history, so I’m not sure why they have the option here also. I’m guessing it’s more clear to users and therefore they feel safer. Private Browsing mode will also delete all cookies when Firefox is closed. Other data that is not stored include form and search bar entries, passwords, list of downloads, and cached web content (temporary Internet files).
Overall, Firefox’s implementation of private browsing is really good from a privacy and security perspective and definitely worth using when you need to keep your browsing history private. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!
Feb 02, 2016 12:26 pm | Aseem Kishore | Windows 10
Troubleshoot Windows 10 Does Not Go to Sleep
I’ve already written about how to fix issues with Windows 7 not going to sleep and Windows 8 not going to sleep, but I haven’t talked about sleep issues in Windows 10. Due to the wide number of machines and huge variety of hardware that Windows can run on, every single version of Windows will have problems going to sleep in certain situations.
Sometimes the problem is because of hardware, sometimes it’s due to drivers and other times it’s something not configured properly with the operating system. In this article, I’m going to go through all the different solutions I could find to fix this issue in Windows 10.
Note that I’ll try not to repeat the solutions already mentioned in the Windows 7 and Windows 8 articles, so feel free to read those if none of the solutions below work. Since Windows 10 is fairly new, there seems to be a lot of issues on specific machines, probably due to drivers not fully supporting Windows 10 yet.
The only real solution in those cases is to wait until an appropriate Windows 10 driver is released. Method 1 is your best shot if you’ve found that many people with the same machine as yours are having sleep issues.
Method 1 – Update Chipset Drivers
The quickest way to possibly solve this issue is to download the latest drivers for your Windows 10 machine from the PC manufacturer website. For example, I have a Dell and using Dell System Detect, it automatically scans my system and finds all the appropriate driver updates.
In addition to updating drivers, make sure you go to Settings – Update & Security and install all the latest updates for Windows 10 from Microsoft.
Method 2 – Check for Power Requests
Sometimes certain Windows programs send power requests to the system, which prevent the system from shutting down or going to sleep. Normally these cases are valid like when you are playing a DVD and there is no interaction with the mouse and keyboard for several hours, the screen will remain on.
The requests should automatically go away when the program is closed. However, there are instances where it can become stuck. You can check to see all power requests by opening an elevated command prompt (Click on Start, type cmd, right-click on Command Prompt and choose Run as Administrator) and typing in the following command:
powercfg -requests
Ideally, you want all of the items to say None, which means no power requests currently exist. If you do have something listed like SRVNET, check out the Windows 8 article I mentioned at the very beginning of the article.
Another good use of the powercfg command is to see which devices on your system can wake the system up. Normally, this includes the mouse and keyboard, but sometimes other devices like the network card, graphics card, etc., register themselves and can cause issues. Read Method 3 from my Windows 7 post to prevent devices from waking your computer up.
I’ve also read that checking the Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer box for your network adapter fixes the sleep issue too. Also, to see the last device that waked your computer up, run the following command:
powercfg -lastwake
Method 3 – Run Troubleshooters
Windows 10 has some good troubleshooting apps installed that can fix a lot of problems for you automatically. Go to Control Panel, click on Troubleshooting and then click on View all at the top left.
The two you want to run are Power and System Maintenance.
I’ve had some success running these on certain client machines, so it’s worth a shot.
Method 4 – Disconnect Devices
I had one client whose computer would not sleep and after hours of trying all kinds of fixes in Windows, it ended up being a Logitech USB Joystick that was causing the problem! So another possibly easy solution is to remove any connected USB devices, restart your computer and see if Windows 10 goes to sleep.
This is especially true if you have any USB devices like writing tablets, joysticks, microphones, cameras, external hard drives, etc. connected to your computer. If you do find that it’s one of your USB devices, try to find the latest driver for that device and install it.
Method 5 – Clean Boot
Beyond these issues, the only other reason is some kind of startup program or service that is preventing Windows from going to sleep. The only solution to this problem is performing a clean boot. You can read instructions here on how to perform a clean boot. Follow the instructions for Windows 8.1 as they will be the same for Windows 10.
In the clean boot, you basically disable all startup items and then restart the computer. If you find that the computer is going to sleep, you now know the problem lies with one of the startup programs. You then enable each startup program one by one and restart the computer until the problem comes back. At that point, you’ll know which program is the culprit. It’s a tedious process, but it does work!
Before performing a clean boot, you can quickly check to see if it’ll work by restarting Windows in safe mode. If the computer sleeps fine in safe mode, then go ahead and perform a clean boot to find the program causing the sleep problem.
Method 6 – Restore Plan Defaults
Another quick fix is to restore your power plan defaults. Go to Control Panel, click on Power Options, and then click on Change plan settings next to the plan you have selected.
Click on Restore default settings for this plan and restart your computer.
Method 7 – Restore PC
This is obviously a last resort, but resetting your PC might be the only thing you can do if you’ve tried everything else. Check out my post on resetting your Windows 10 PC. Note that you can choose to keep your data and files, so it’s not a complete wipe of your system.
It’s basically reinstalling Windows 10 and that’s it. A lot of people have had success with this method, but it’s more time consuming and riskier. Make sure to backup your data before you restore your PC just in case something goes wrong.
Other Possible Solutions
There are several one-off solutions that work for some people and no one really knows why. Anyway, I have compiled them here just in case you happen to be one of those people!
Some users have stated that if they are log into Windows 10 with a Microsoft account, the sleep/shutdown problem goes away when they change the password on their Microsoft account. This makes zero sense, but it has worked for some.
If you have a Windows PC, you probably have a lot of Intel software installed like Intel Management Engine, Intel Rapid Storage Technology, Intel Security Assistant, Intel HD Graphics Driver, etc. You don’t really need all this software in order for your system to work, so you can try uninstalling these programs and seeing if that fixes the issue.
Turn off or disable fast startup. This is a feature in Windows 8/10 that helps the computer boot very fast from a shutdown state (not a restart). Just Google it and see if it fixes your problem.
Hopefully, one of the above solutions will work for your computer. If not, post a comment and I’ll try to help. Enjoy!
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