Peter from the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes, "Over at EFF, we just released a version of our HTTPS Everywhere extension for Firefox for Android. HTTPS Everywhere upgrades your insecure web requests to HTTPS on many thousands of sites, and this means that Firefox on Android with HTTPS Everywhere is now by far the most secure browser against dragnet surveillance attacks like those performed by the NSA, GCHQ, and other intelligence agencies." — Read the rest

HTTPS Everywhere, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's browser add-on that forces encrypted connections to sites that have the option, has just hit 1.0, 13 months after its first public beta. By using HTTPS Everywhere, you can protect your browsing habits from being peeked at by people on your network and by your ISP, as well as protecting potentially valuable login credentials. — Read the rest

The new version of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's excellent HTTPS Everywhere browser tool specifically protects against having your credentials to many popular sites lifted with Firesheep (as well as by deliberately malicious tools that actual bad guys make). Wherever a site allows for SSL throughout your session, HTTPS Everywhere will add this. — Read the rest

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Onion Router (TOR) project have teamed up to release a new privacy-enhancing Firefox plugin called HTTPS Everywhere. It was inspired by Google's new encrypted search engine, and it ensures that whenever you visit a site that accepts encrypted connections, your browser switches into encrypted mode, hiding your traffic from snoops on your local network and at your ISP. — Read the rest

Keith Axline at The Tools We Need, writes that if you haven't already, switch to Firefox and install Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes, CanvasBlocker and Smart Referrer. Use 1.1.1.1 as your DNS and change your default search engine. — Read the rest

When you send someone else an email, your mail server connects to their mail server to transmit the message, and spy agencies have made a surveillance banquet out of these transactions, harvesting emails by the billions.

An imminently forthcoming version of Google's Chrome browser will flip the way that browsers convey information about privacy and security to users: instead of discreetly informing users that the HTTPS-enabled sites they're browsing are more secure, they'll flag any non-HTTPS site as insecure, with a series of escalating alerts that will end — at some unspecified date — by displaying an exclamation point inside red triangle and the letters HTTP next to the web addresses of non-HTTPS sites.

Fallout from yesterday's enormous dump of internal documents from Italy's notorious Hacking Team, a cyber-arms dealer for the world's worst autocratic regimes, is just getting started.

Librarians in Massachusetts are working to give their patrons a chance to opt-out of pervasive surveillance. Partnering with the ACLU of Massachusetts, area librarians have been teaching and taking workshops on how freedom of speech and the right to privacy are compromised by the surveillance of online and digital communications -- and what new privacy-protecting services they can offer patrons to shield them from unwanted spying of their library activity.

April from EFF writes, "Help improve the Electronic Frontier Foundation's free software projects to defend freedom & enhance privacy and security online.

Here's a list of all the projects we invite you to hack your heart out on!"

The Electronic Frontier Foundation worked with UC Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute to uncover a widespread program of search-hijacking by American ISPs. Many US ISPs run covert proxies that redirect certain lucrative search queries (made by customers who believe that they are searching Google or another search engine) to their preferred suppliers, pocketing an affiliate fee for delivering their customers. — Read the rest

For reasons unknown, Microsoft has changed the settings on Hotmail to disable HTTPS for users in several countries including Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Hotmail users in those countries can now be readily spied upon by ISPs and their governments. — Read the rest

Photo: Prasad Kholkute

Firesheep should freak you out, at least for a moment. It's a Firefox extension that lets any normal human being–I'm not talking about you, BoingBoing readers–install the add-on and then steal the active sessions of people using unencrypted browsing sessions with popular online services on the same Wi-Fi network. — Read the rest