Submitted by Deepesh Agarwal on Sat, 02/16/2008 - 11:52
You might not be knowing but all Mozilla based web-browser's including Firefox prefetch websites and images that you might be visiting next, for faster loading times as instructed by webmasters, prefetching is enabled by default and webmasters can make the web-browser download webpages and images in-advance (including third-party content) using rel="prefetch" in their code.
You might want to disable this behavior if your ISP charges you pay-per-byte for network bandwidth or you are privacy conscious and don't want to get cookies/images from websites that you yourself never actually visited, to disable simply follow the instructions below:
- Type about:config in your Firefox address bar and press Enter.
- Type network.prefetch-next in filter text box.
- Change the value to false as shown below.
Comments
Prefetch
In web browsers, "PREFETCH" is just about the dumbest, and highest security risk that comes TURNED ON by DEFAULT.
ALSO: Every time you update Firefox, the update installer turns "Prefetch" back on again, so you need to enter the config screen and toggle it to FALSE again, once there if you RIGHT CLICK the NETWORK.PREFETCH-NEXT line the small menu has an option to TOGGLE, that will change it from TRUE to FALSE or visa-versa.
I reported this on my site when the Mozilla porn punks first developed it, and gave detailed disabling instructions, and showed proof it's a big OPEN DOOR FOR HACKERS OF MALICIOUS INTENT.
Internet Explorer also has it, and is not as easy to disable or remove because of being split into several parts. The IE7Pro plug in has several entries in the settings which ALL must be disabled to fully block the default prefetch option they call "FASTER IE".
Nothing worse than trespasser's squatting and living on your hard drive without your approval.... Any cookie is a TRESPASSER.....
IE 7 and 8 also steal your default settings, so no matter which browser you update, you must reset your preferred security settings.
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