RequestPolicy

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

by mzilla2000 on Dec. 30, 2010 · permalink

I think RequestPolicy is a "must have" add-on for anyone who is at all security-conscious.

Without RequestPolicy, it's amazing how a simple-looking website can actually be connecting you to a whole bunch of other sites too, sometimes undesirable sites that you have *no* idea about and not the type of site that you'd actually knowingly click on.

But with the RequestPolicy add-on installed, you get advance warning and you can decline to allow those sites on a case-by-case basis. Or, you can opt to allow whichever sites are necessary to make the main site work right.

You can choose to make those settings permanent, so that the next time you visit that site, the site will in all likelihood "just work" without having to go through the whole process again.

Or, if for some reason you don't want to keep permanent records (anywhere) of the sites you visit, you can opt to make the RequestPolicy settings temporary and then when you're done visiting that site, you can "revoke" the settings for that particular site.

RequestPolicy has an easy-to-use "Export" button which lets you save a backup copy of your RequestPolicy settings to a file at a location of your choosing. You can name this file whatever you want - I put a date on mine for easier future reference. Then, at some future time, you can click the RequestPolicy "Import" button and select whichever of your backup files you want, to restore Request Policy's settings to that previous state. I used the "Import" button recently after I installed a new version of Linux and new version of Firefox, and it worked really great - instead of having to go through the trial-and-error process of the various websites I visit, I just clicked "Import" and voila, there were all my settings, restored and ready to use. :)

True, you need a bit of patience sometimes when first visiting some new sites, especially the way some websites nowadays try to connect you to so many other things. Sometimes those things are necessary to make the site work, and sometimes they're not. It can take a bit of trial-of-error to figure out exactly which additional sites you need to allow to make some poorly-designed irritating website work correctly. That said, the worst that can happen is that you'll have to make a few extra clicks and take a few seconds to decide *which* sites to allow (that's where the trial-and-error part comes in) - but it's not *that* much hassle, really. Well worth it, considering that it allows you to (in my opinion) keep your computer safer by having the option to not connect to sites that you didn't actually click on, unless you specifically allow them.

RequestPolicy probably isn't something that the stereotypical techno-phobic senile grandma could handle, but for the rest of us, I highly recommend it.

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- Firefox 3.6.x on Linux.
- RequestPolicy plays nicely with the other add-ons I use:
- The add-ons I have installed are, in alphabetical order: NoScript, RequestPolicy, Small Screen Renderer, User Agent Switcher, and WebDeveloper.