Welcome to ‘Private Browsing and Client-side Scripting Settings.’ After watching this video, you will be able to: Enable private browsing mode in web browsers, and manage client-side scripting settings. If you want to hide your browsing activity, then you can utilize private browsing, which is a web browsing mode that does not save the kinds of information about your activity that a standard browsing session would, such as the history of visited websites, passwords entered, data entered in web forms, cookies, and session cache. This data is deleted when you close the private browsing window. But please note that this only hides the information locally from people who might use the web browser on the device after you; it does not hide the information from your Internet Service Provider (or ISP) or from the websites and web servers that you visit. Additionally, your place of education or your workplace, might also be able to view this data. All the major web browsers have a private browsing mode, but they refer to it by different names. For example, in Google Chrome it is called "Incognito Mode," in Microsoft Edge it is referred to as "InPrivate," and in Firefox and Opera browsers, it is simply called "Private Browsing." In Google Chrome, you can start a private browsing session by selecting the "Customize and control Google Chrome" button in the top right corner, then selecting "New Incognito window." In Microsoft Edge, you select the "Settings and more" button in the top right corner, then select "New InPrivate window." And in Opera, you select the "Customize and control Opera" logo in the top left corner, then select "New private window." Alternatively, in all three of these cases, you can use the shortcut key, which is Control+Shift+N. But, in the Mozilla Firefox browser, the shortcut is Control+Shift+P. In the early days of the World Wide Web, most web pages were written in HTML, and they were fairly static pages; that is, the page looked the same to every user who visited it. This issue was resolved by the development of dynamic web pages that could adapt to the needs of different scenarios and different viewers of the web page. These dynamic pages are generally generated in one of two ways. Either the processing is done by the server that is hosting the dynamic content; this is referred to as "server-side scripting:" or the client computer is responsible for the processing, which is referred to as "client-side scripting." With client-side scripting, special code is embedded in the web page itself, and the user’s web browser does the required processing to retrieve the data. By far the most common example of this kind of client-side scripting code is JavaScript. These client-side scripts will generally provide a set of instructions to be performed by the browser. The key benefits of client-side scripts are that users can see the scripts on the front-end, they do not need to rely on server resources, and therefore they can help reduce the load on servers. However, although client-side scripting can be very useful, it also brings its own dangers in terms of security implications. In theory, the instructions contained in the code that is processed by the web browser could instruct the browser to perform all manner of malicious actions including accessing settings and data on the local computer. Fortunately, web browsers are designed with in-built security measures to mitigate against most of these kinds of security threats, such as restricting the code to only executing within the browser, and therefore not allowing access to the local computer system. However, malware developers are constantly trying to find new ways to circumvent these security measures or detect flaws in them. Therefore, it is important for you to be able to control client-side scripting in your web browser. To help you decide whether or not you should disable JavaScript in your web browser, here are some pros and cons of disabling it. First, some of the pros. The major pro for disabling JavaScript is security. One of the biggest known potential issues with JavaScript is suspicious webpages, and the possibility and opportunity for malicious code to be run in your browser that could adversely affect your computer. Browsing speed could be improved by eliminating the dynamic content that JavaScript can provide. Not all browsers are capable of supporting and running JavaScript effectively, as they can each interpret the code in a different manner, which could lead to inconsistencies in functionality and the overall browsing experience. If you disable the JavaScript programming language, you can make sure that your browser successfully views and loads pages correctly, particularly in the case of older web pages and websites. Another major issue for Internet users is that companies can track their Internet usage and then sell that data on to other interested companies. If you disable JavaScript, a lot of the cookies that are responsible for the gathering of this personal information will no longer function correctly. And now some of the cons. When you disable JavaScript, you lose the ability to view a lot of the useful dynamic content that is available on the Internet, such as images, videos, maps, and various types of media. Additionally, many of the features that create the user interface will disappear which can look very confusing and hard to read on a website that contains a lot of JavaScript-based content. With JavaScript disabled, it can be much harder and take much longer to search for and scroll through the content on dynamic web pages, and you may find yourself needing to continually click on ‘Next’ links to progress through the content. If you want to stop JavaScript scripts being run in your web browser, you can disable them in your web browser’s settings. For example, in Google Chrome, you select Settings, then Privacy and security, then Site Settings, and then under the Content section, you select JavaScript. Here you can set the default behavior to either allow all sites to run JavaScript, or to not allow any sites to run JavaScript. The default for this setting is to allow all sites to run JavaScript. If you want to set a custom behavior for some sites, you can either block specific sites from running JavaScript scripts, or you can allow specific sites to run them. As before, you can use the syntax [*.] in front of the domain name to include all sub-domains as well. When deciding whether to block these client-side JavaScript scripts, or not, you need to balance between the additional functionality they provide on a website against the potential security risks they might pose. This is what you might see when you visit a website that you have added to the list of sites that are not allowed to run JavaScript code. You then have the option of continuing to block JavaScript on this site or allowing it. In this video, you learned that: You can hide your browsing activity by using private browsing, which does not save historical information about your activity. Private browsing only hides the information locally from people using the web browser on the device after you. Dynamic web pages can adapt to different situations and different users. With client-side scripting, code is embedded in the web page, and the user’s web browser performs the required processing. And, you can stop JavaScript scripts being run in your web browser, or on specific sites.
