For Rapidshare, Megaupload, Mediafire, Depositfiles, Sendspace and many, many more..

Most of the file hosting services have a very annoying procedure for free users to download a hosted file on their servers i.e users are made to wait for minutes before the download could actually start. While plenty of cheats are available in the WWW to deal with such annoyances, most of them are crap or involve a ridiculously lengthy procedure.

SkipScreen is one of the easier ways to deal with the counter annoyance. This is a tiny firefox extension (also available as a separate windows application) which works as expected, it skips the counter screen and thus leading you to the page where you can click and begin your download the very moment! SkipScreen has been around for a while and it works great. It’s easy to use and probably you wont need a tutorial for using the extension but, you can get your queries sorted on FAQ

This is where you will be skipped-to while downloading from rapidshare with SkipScreen

Fact: Mediafire has requested Mozilla.com to take down the SkipScreen extension from their server but Mozilla seems to have ignored the request. While this cheat is still active and no one is in a pursuit to bring it down, you can enjoy skipping screens!

No cookies. No search-term records. Access log deletes within 48 hours

It’s a quite difficult to obtain and maintain privacy on the web. With the various intentions of collecting user data, it’s really hard to be anonymous all the time. Google is a very good example in context to ‘user privacy‘. Google Search collects the user’s IP address, search items along with the date and time which can be avoided by using proxy anonymizers and even better, by using a search engine called Scroogle.

Wikipedia reveals:

Google originally placed a cookie on each registered user’s computer, which can be used to track that person’s search history, and that cookie was not set to expire until 2038. As of 2007, Google’s cookie now expires in two years but renews itself when a Google service is used. There is no evidence that Google turns over information to the FBI or the NSA, though some users remain anxious about the possibility. In response, Google claims cookies are necessary to maintain user preferences between sessions and offer other search features.

In early 2005, the United States Department of Justice filed a motion in federal court to force Google to comply with a subpoena for, “the text of each search string entered onto Google’s search engine over a two-month period (absent any information identifying the person who entered such query).” Google fought the subpoena, due to concerns about users’ privacy. In March 2006, the court ruled partially in Google’s favor, recognizing the privacy implications of turning over search terms and refusing to grant access.

Who is Scroogle? How does Scroogle work?

Scroogle, a Mozilla Foundation, is a nonprofit organization with a history of activism on privacy issues. For more info visit: Link

When you enter a search term through Scroogle Search, Scroogle randonly grabs an IP from a pool of it’s IP addresses called Goo IPs. It uses SSL to encrypt your search activity.Then Google issues a new cookie with a new ID, and sends the search results. Scroogle deletes the cookie and saves the results in a file which is also deleted within hour. Google records Sroogle’s IP address, search items and the date and time.

Is there a Firefox, Flock, Microsoft IE7 / IE8, Opera or a Chrome extension available for Scroogle?

Yes. A short tutorial on ‘how to’ is available on the website. www.scroogle.org

So, if you have used this service, do share your experiences in the comments section.

This can be done in Windows XP and Windows 7

We all want privacy and we are the ones who are mutually responsible for disturbing everybody else’s privacy! It’s true, we all (at least most of us) are curious to take a sneak peek of what exists and whats going on a computer of the person who isn’t on his desk. This is the time when the victim can defend his privacy by locking his desktop.

Windows has a great inbuilt feature to lock and password protect the desktop without any extra effort. Just press the Windows Key + L and your desktop will be locked. To unlock the desktop, you will have to simply enter your windows user account password. This hot key works for Windows XP and Windows 7.

Or you can even create a shortcut to lock your desktop:

• Right click on desktop > New > Shortcut > Type rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation > Next > Type the name of the shortcut, any name you want it to be> Finish
  

If you don’t have any password set for windows login, simply follow the illustrations below (for windows XP):

Windows 7 users can change or add password with the help of this Link.

If you are a single user, you can avoid the annoyance of entering password every time your log into windows:

• Configure windows user account to automatically logon during boot up in Windows XP

• Configure windows user account to automatically logon during boot up in Windows 7
  

Now you should be able to lock – password protect the desktop, and automatically log into your Windows desk!