Rubenerd

After talking about scary stuff in my previous post on the RequestPolicy extension for Firefox and other Mozilla browsers, now I get to talk about cool, fun stuff!

Its an effective advertisement blocker!

There are many different solutions to combating advertising on pages such as AdBlock Plus, GlimmerBlocker and the like, but all require the use of regularly updated blacklists to work effectively. You're probably subscribed to several lists yourself.

I didn't even think of it when I installed it, but given the vast majority of advertising is hosted off-site (which makes it a capable attack vector, as well as being irritating) RequestPolicy also blocks this content. As the Ghostery extension does with web bugs, it also lets me see where all the advertising is coming from on a page which isn't useful in and of itself, but its still terribly interesting.

I'm not ready to delete AdBlock Plus, but I have it deactivated for now. So far, there's very little difference. Pretty cool! ^___^

Its a redirect previewer!

One of the features I liked about TinyURL was the ability to "preview" URLs before you proceeded to visit them. This helps guard against people who use URL shorteners to obfuscate dodgy addresses.

RequestPolicy also blocks automatic redirects, instead rendering retro 301 and 302 redirect errors with a link to the new location. I can preview its address before visiting anything I may not have wanted to, and I get a sneak peak into how websites are constructed which also isn't useful in and of itself, but still terribly interesting. I've used that same sentence somewhere before recently.

It puts a red flag in the status bar!

Does that make me a communist?