![]() But it's really not that big of a deal, it's really more of a privacy issue than an actual security issue. So you see local ads, rather than just national ads. So what's so bad about cookies? Well, some people don't like the fact that that same information, like your location for that weather site, could be used to show you advertisements based on that data. And it will also remember information for other things, like your preferences for viewing websites for instance. That information is on your computer, it's not being stored somewhere else. For instance, if you go to a weather site and you enter in your zip code so it can show you your local weather, it will save that information in a cookie and the next time you go to look at the weather it instantly knows where you're located so it doesn't have to ask you again. What they really are is this information is saved on your computer, not information sent to the web server. Now cookies are something that has been villainized over the last few years in the press as something to be concerned about, but in fact cookies are misunderstood. So the next security preferences are about cookies. So it's very easy to turn that on temporarily and get that functionality back for a website that may actually be using it. Very rarely are they used for the general reasons by sites, and if they are you always have the ability to go to Safari and select "Block Pop-up Windows" here to turn it on or off very easily and very quickly, or with the Shift-Command-K. That basically blocks pop-ups, these little windows peering over the content you're looking at right now so that it can show you ads. The last one, "Block pop-up windows", well that's one everyone should have turned on. Java isn't used as much as it once was, so probably disabling this one won't do as much harm, but still there's really no record of there being much harm to be worried about out there in Java right now. You can see that it doesn't work at all of course, because those pages are dynamic and require JavaScript. And here's what happens when you turn off JavaScript and try to go to, say, me.com - the MobileMe homepage. ![]() Also turning off JavaScript will do even more. ![]() So turning that off is really gonna disable you from viewing a lot of good stuff on the Internet. Go ahead and you can see that there's no video right there. Here's what happens when you go to YouTube with plug-ins disabled. For instance plug-ins include things like Flash, which are used everywhere. But these are used by websites all over the place. Yeah, sure that'll make you more secure, but also turning off your computer will make you completely secure. Now, I'm really disappointed that a lot of security websites basically tell you to turn all three of these off. So next we've got four different settings for web content: the first three basically disable features of your browser. And Safari every once in a while updates its local database of that Google database, so that it can know when to show this alert. Google keeps a database of sites that may be malicious and it updates this database constantly. Now where Safari gets this information is from Google. If you've never been there before or you didn't even request to go there, you thought you were going somewhere else by clicking on a link, then you can stop. So if it's a website that you already know and trust, you can continue to go to it. Now, this doesn't mean that just going to the website is going to be a problem, it's just a warning. So what happens when you have this on is, when you try to go to a website and it either has malware on it or has been suspected of fishing - that's the practice of trying to get you reveal personal information - uh, it will put up an alert and warn you about this. Now there's a whole bunch of different things here and if we're not familiar with web security they can be a little confusing. So here is the security pane in the Safari Preferences box. Let's go and take a look at what each one of these does. So being secure while browsing the web is important enough for Safari to have an entire Preferences pane dedicated to just security features. On today's episode let's talk about Safari browser security. ![]() Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. Check out MacMost Now 269: Understanding Safari Security Preferences at YouTube for closed captioning and more options. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |