Tools For Online Success – Part 2

Welcome back to the second part of this series where we discover tools to help you in your quest to make a fortune online. If you haven’t read the first installment yet, I will not hold it against you. In the first installment we discussed a safe and secure place to hold all your online information.

This is vital to have as you will have many usernames and passwords to all the different programs you will more than likely get involved with.

The second tool in your arsenal of programs will be a web browser. As with the previous program, I am very concerned with security and I have tested many browsers. If you think there are only a few, you would be wrong as there are probably a dozen or more different web browsers that you can download and use.

Most of the not well know browsers (Maxthon, Avant, Green Browser, SeaMonkey, Kmeleon, Galeon, Camino, etc.) are based on either the Internet Explorer engine or the Mozilla engine.

Then there is Google Chrome, Konqueror, Safari, and Opera that used their own engine. The browsers you have available will be determined by what operating system you use – most of the major ones will be available to Windows, MacOS, and Linux – except for anything to do with Internet Explorer which is only for Windows.

Why Opera? There are a number of reasons, but mostly it works better and doesn’t get in the way of what I am trying to do. The funny thing is that most of the ‘nice’ features on other browsers were pioneered by Opera.

You can get the same functions in other browsers, but you have to install extensions to do it. If anyone has ever had an extension problem with Firefox can attest that it is not too much fun. I surf a lot of traffic exchanges and have found that Opera works the best with NO competition in that area. You get none of the strange messages, pop-ups and other things that other browsers serve up. You can set-up mouse gestures, one key to change to the next or previous tab, a bit torrent client, email program, RSS reader, and many other features.

Now with any program, especially a web browser, that is installed on your computer – there are security risks. Every browser will leave files on your hard drive to leave a trail of EVERYTHING you do on the Internet. This is how the police can tell where you have been on your computer if you have been bad. Anyone setting at your computer (or from the Internet) can get to these files and find out where you have been on any given day and time on the Internet.

This will also include passwords and usernames typed into the browser. So how can you prevent this? You can clear the browser cache when you close down the program or used ‘Internet Cleaner’ type software when you are done.

The option I use is a little different in that I have several ‘portable’ programs that I keep on a USB thumb drive that is with me. The advantage of using USB portable applications is that nothing is installed on your computer; the program runs from the USB drive. I keep little utilities, word processing, browsers, email, and many other programs on a USB thumb drive so I can work from any computer as if it were my own.

You can also just put them in a folder and run them from your desktop. In the case of web browsers, I have all my bookmarks, settings, passwords, etc. with me. If you have ever tried to use someone elses computer to find what you have in your bookmarks, you understand how frustrating that can be.

Some of the portable editions of the popular web browsers leave the same files on the computer they are run on – just like if they were installed. So someone can still access these files and see what you have been doing on their computer. So how do you over come that?

Opera Portable is the solution. What makes this browser different from the Opera USB is that it puts all the files that make up the browser (with all your bookmarks, passwords, etc) into a single compressed file on you USB drive and securely erases ALL traces off the computer you are using it on. Now you can use ANY computer anywhere and not worry about someone finding your files left on the computer.

This is the ultimate in safe browsing. For further security you can set a master password for Opera (just don’t forget as it NOT recoverable in any way shape or form unlike other browsers and programs) and if you lose the USB drive your bookmarks, passwords, etc are still safe. To back up your data, there is just one single file to copy so you can actually keep several copies in different places for safety.

Since it is also a small file, you could even email it to yourself every so often for a cheap Internet backup solution (you can do this with other files also like your KeyPass data base).

Now on ANY web browser, NEVER, EVER leave your bank, credit card, or other such data in the password manager! In this way even if you lost the thumb drive, laptop, or someone just sits at your computer and goes to the site for these – there will be nothing they can do to get in. Most of the browsers will automatically put both the username and password for sites it has remembered.

All someone else has to do is go to the site and click “Login” and they are in your accounts!

Now you have a secure way to keep you passwords and other important data and a way to browse the Internet safely.

In the next installment we will web page creation, it is not rocket science but it is something you will need to know. You need to be safe in your quest to make money from home.

Until next time.

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Tagged As: Make Money, Make Money At Home, Opera, Tools to Make Money