Ask Leo!: Browsers

Does this email address that shows for auto-complete mean my computer or account has been hacked?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:00:00 -08:00

I need your help with a problem I am having with Amazon.com. Yesterday, after selecting an item to purchase at check out, I was required to sign in. When I entered my first initial, the drop-down menu of my email address appeared. However, there was also an email address which is unknown to me. I contacted Amazon by phone, but I was disconnected. My question is: How did someone gain access to my account on Amazon's website to enter an unauthorized email address in the first place? I thought Amazon's website is secure.

I thought about sending an email to the unauthorized email address, but decided that it might open my computer to something worse. Is there any way to find out where this email might have come from?

]]> Believe it or not, this actually has absolutely nothing to do with Amazon.com or whatever site you might be logging into. Amazon wouldn't have been able to help you even if you had made contact.

To be even clearer: the appearance of that address in the Email field does not mean someone gained access to your Amazon account.

To understand where that email address did come from, we need to understand just a little bit about how your web browser works and the teeny, tiniest bit about HTML.

It's not scary. Really.

How do I get my login ID and password to stop showing on sites that I log into?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:58:30 -08:00

How do I eliminate my email/password from automatically showing up on our computer for Facebook? I have searched their help answers. Could it have something to do with our Firefox settings?

]]> Yep. It's all about Firefox.

Actually, this applies to not only Firefox, but most other browsers as well, and not just to Facebook, but many other sites, too.

You've configured your browser to be helpful.

If that's not the kind of help that you want, we can change that.

Does leaving tabs open in my browser eat up bandwidth?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 08:00:00 -08:00

My brother complains to my dad that his video games are slow because I have tabs open on my browser (formerly, Internet Explorer, now Firefox 4) and I am "chewing up the bandwidth". Usually, one is Facebook and others are miscellaneous blogs. I am not the most computer-savvy person, but I know from computer-savvy friends that bandwidth doesn't work that way. How can I explain to my dad that that's not how bandwidth works and therefore, I don't have to shut down tabs?

]]> Usually, that's not how bandwidth works. I'll certainly agree that it's extremely unlikely that tabs in your browser have anything to do with your brother's video game speed.

But (and there's always a but), there are scenarios where what you're doing in your browser may have an impact.

It's more likely that other things are happening on your system or your network.

What's a "mht" file and how do I reliably share them with others?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:00:00 -08:00

I have been using Opera as my web browser for about two months. I am running Windows 2000 on a Gateway P4-1300 and I am generally happy with it. Before Opera, I used Internet Explorer 6. I like to keep files with interesting text and graphics available for reference, thus I have downloaded a lot of ".htm" files. What IE6 downloads as .htm, Opera downloads as ".mht". When I send these to friends by attaching them to email, frequently my friends are unable to read them; that is, unable to read .mht files. At that point, I am not always able to send them a URL instead of the file. Moreover, when I am offline and I attempt to read one of these .mht files, I invoke Opera, which I do not want to do. I want to know two things: 1. Is there a way to set up Opera to download .htm instead of .mht? 2. Is there a way to convert all of my .mht to .htm and if so, what is it? I have nothing against using fourth-party software, but I prefer that it be free. Because of this problem, I will soon give up Opera and go on to something else. But, even if I buy a new machine, I will still want to convert .mht to .htm.

]]> .mht and .htm files are two related, yet quite different things. Both contain the web page that you might be viewing, but only one contains all of the web page that you're viewing.

To understand why that is, and from that, understand what you might want to do, we need to look at how web pages are constructed and what happens when you try to save one.

How do I get PDF files to open inside my browser? Or not?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 11:53:19 -08:00

There are forums full of questions relating to "my pc will not open pdf's in browsers although I have Adobe Reader v9 as suggested in the resulting error message". I have this issue as well.

]]> There are forums full of almost any question you can think of, easily answered or not.

This one falls into the "surprisingly complex to answer" category.

Personally I hate having PDFs open within the browser. I find that the PDF reading application, like Foxit, Acrobat or others, generally provide me much more control over how the document is presented in turn making it much easier for me to read.

It's one of the first things I change when I configure a browser.

But, of course, not everyone feels the way I do.