Slashdot Mirror

Platypus!

With Platypus, you can easily create Greasemonkey scripts to strip junk out of your favorite sites. You don't have to use JavaScript to strip out those unwanted sidebars at your favorite sites, and you don't have to search for scripts that others have written to see if someone else wanted to make the same changes.

Plug-ins to Avoid FasterFox [mozdev.org] - Over the last few months the amount of visitors using Mozilla Firefox has grown to about 25%. The amount of bandwidth being used has also increased a large amount. Part of the reason behind this is that many Firefox users use an extension called "Fasterfox". This extension "pre-fetches" links on a page so that if the user were to click on a link it would load much faster because its already been downloaded. This may be more convenient for viewer, but is a major problem for many webmasters who are low on bandwidth. Since Fasterfox constantly requests new files, it can cause many servers to overload much faster than if a person viewing the same content without Fasterfox were to view it.

This setting should be used with care
Visit the FAQ page at http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/ for more information.

I use the DownThemAll extension for file grabbing. It has regex built in.

  http://downthemall.mozdev.org/

Forecastfox - Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or status bar with this highly customizable and unobtrusive extension.

FlashGot - Download one link, selected links or all the links of a page at the maximum speed with a single click, using the most popular external download managers for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD (dozens currently supported products, see http://www.flashgot.net/ for details). FlashGot offers also a Build Gallery functionality which helps to synthesize full media galleries in one page, from serial contents previously scattered on several pages, for easy and fast download all.

Adblock - One of the best plug-ins ever written. Adblack allows you to block elements of a web page, images, flash, i-frames, etc This will help make pages load faster and with zero ads!

Adblock is a content filtering plug-in for the Mozilla and Firebird browsers. It is both more robust and more precise than the built-in image blocker.

Adblock allows the user to specify filters, which remove unwanted content based on the source-address. If this sounds complicated, dont worry: its not.

Just add a few filters. Every time a webpage loads, Adblock will intercept and disable the elements matching your filters. See?- nothing to it.

Adblock Filterset.G Updater - This is a companion extension to Adblock and should be used in conjunction with it. This extension automatically downloads the latest version of Filterset.G every 4-7 days. Filterset.G is an excellent set of filters maintained by G for Adblock that blocks most ads on the internet. In addition, this extension allows you to define your own set of filters that you can add along with Filterset.G during an update.

Tabbrowser Preferences - This extension provides a comprehensive UI for changing a number of the hidden tabbed browsing preferences in Firefox. It also provides the ability to control how internal and external links are opened in the browser and how the browser will react when links are sent to it.

IE Tab - IE Tab - an extension from Taiwan, features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. Note, this will also allow you to run Windows Update also.

Wizz RSS News Reader - News is the new frontier for the web. With the up-and-coming rss and atom technologies, news is becoming easier to read and more accessible, but Firefoxs livebookmarks are rather lacking when it comes to features.

Wizz RSS News Reader is the solution. Over the past year, its evolved into a mature feed aggregator. Although the UI lacks polish, it includes a number of powerful features, such as the watch list, OPML support, and the ability to subscribe to podcasts. The documentation is extensive and the author maintains support forums, so its easy to get help too :)

Viamatic foXpose - The Viamatic foXpose plugin is a tiny little extension that lets you view all your tabs inside a browser window.

Duplicate Tab - Duplicate Tab allows you to clone a tab along with its history.

SessionSaver - SessionSaver restores your browser -exactly- as you left it, every startup, every time. Not even a crash will phase it. Windows, tabs, even things you were typing theyre all saved. Use the menu to add + remove sessions; right, shift, or middle-clickin

Forecastfox - Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or status bar with this highly customizable and unobtrusive extension.

FlashGot - Download one link, selected links or all the links of a page at the maximum speed with a single click, using the most popular external download managers for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD (dozens currently supported products, see http://www.flashgot.net/ for details). FlashGot offers also a Build Gallery functionality which helps to synthesize full media galleries in one page, from serial contents previously scattered on several pages, for easy and fast download all.

Adblock - One of the best plug-ins ever written. Adblack allows you to block elements of a web page, images, flash, i-frames, etc This will help make pages load faster and with zero ads!

Adblock is a content filtering plug-in for the Mozilla and Firebird browsers. It is both more robust and more precise than the built-in image blocker.

Adblock allows the user to specify filters, which remove unwanted content based on the source-address. If this sounds complicated, dont worry: its not.

Just add a few filters. Every time a webpage loads, Adblock will intercept and disable the elements matching your filters. See?- nothing to it.

Adblock Filterset.G Updater - This is a companion extension to Adblock and should be used in conjunction with it. This extension automatically downloads the latest version of Filterset.G every 4-7 days. Filterset.G is an excellent set of filters maintained by G for Adblock that blocks most ads on the internet. In addition, this extension allows you to define your own set of filters that you can add along with Filterset.G during an update.

Tabbrowser Preferences - This extension provides a comprehensive UI for changing a number of the hidden tabbed browsing preferences in Firefox. It also provides the ability to control how internal and external links are opened in the browser and how the browser will react when links are sent to it.

IE Tab - IE Tab - an extension from Taiwan, features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. Note, this will also allow you to run Windows Update also.

Wizz RSS News Reader - News is the new frontier for the web. With the up-and-coming rss and atom technologies, news is becoming easier to read and more accessible, but Firefoxs livebookmarks are rather lacking when it comes to features.

Wizz RSS News Reader is the solution. Over the past year, its evolved into a mature feed aggregator. Although the UI lacks polish, it includes a number of powerful features, such as the watch list, OPML support, and the ability to subscribe to podcasts. The documentation is extensive and the author maintains support forums, so its easy to get help too :)

Viamatic foXpose - The Viamatic foXpose plugin is a tiny little extension that lets you view all your tabs inside a browser window.

Duplicate Tab - Duplicate Tab allows you to clone a tab along with its history.

SessionSaver - SessionSaver restores your browser -exactly- as you left it, every startup, every time. Not even a crash will phase it. Windows, tabs, even things you were typing theyre all saved. Use the menu to add + remove sessions; right, shift, or middle-clickin

Forecastfox - Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or status bar with this highly customizable and unobtrusive extension.

FlashGot - Download one link, selected links or all the links of a page at the maximum speed with a single click, using the most popular external download managers for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD (dozens currently supported products, see http://www.flashgot.net/ for details). FlashGot offers also a Build Gallery functionality which helps to synthesize full media galleries in one page, from serial contents previously scattered on several pages, for easy and fast download all.

Adblock - One of the best plug-ins ever written. Adblack allows you to block elements of a web page, images, flash, i-frames, etc This will help make pages load faster and with zero ads!

Adblock is a content filtering plug-in for the Mozilla and Firebird browsers. It is both more robust and more precise than the built-in image blocker.

Adblock allows the user to specify filters, which remove unwanted content based on the source-address. If this sounds complicated, dont worry: its not.

Just add a few filters. Every time a webpage loads, Adblock will intercept and disable the elements matching your filters. See?- nothing to it.

Adblock Filterset.G Updater - This is a companion extension to Adblock and should be used in conjunction with it. This extension automatically downloads the latest version of Filterset.G every 4-7 days. Filterset.G is an excellent set of filters maintained by G for Adblock that blocks most ads on the internet. In addition, this extension allows you to define your own set of filters that you can add along with Filterset.G during an update.

Tabbrowser Preferences - This extension provides a comprehensive UI for changing a number of the hidden tabbed browsing preferences in Firefox. It also provides the ability to control how internal and external links are opened in the browser and how the browser will react when links are sent to it.

IE Tab - IE Tab - an extension from Taiwan, features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. Note, this will also allow you to run Windows Update also.

Wizz RSS News Reader - News is the new frontier for the web. With the up-and-coming rss and atom technologies, news is becoming easier to read and more accessible, but Firefoxs livebookmarks are rather lacking when it comes to features.

Wizz RSS News Reader is the solution. Over the past year, its evolved into a mature feed aggregator. Although the UI lacks polish, it includes a number of powerful features, such as the watch list, OPML support, and the ability to subscribe to podcasts. The documentation is extensive and the author maintains support forums, so its easy to get help too :)

Viamatic foXpose - The Viamatic foXpose plugin is a tiny little extension that lets you view all your tabs inside a browser window.

Duplicate Tab - Duplicate Tab allows you to clone a tab along with its history.

SessionSaver - SessionSaver restores your browser -exactly- as you left it, every startup, every time. Not even a crash will phase it. Windows, tabs, even things you were typing theyre all saved. Use the menu to add + remove sessions; right, shift, or middle-clickin

Forecastfox - Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or status bar with this highly customizable and unobtrusive extension.

FlashGot - Download one link, selected links or all the links of a page at the maximum speed with a single click, using the most popular external download managers for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD (dozens currently supported products, see http://www.flashgot.net/ for details). FlashGot offers also a Build Gallery functionality which helps to synthesize full media galleries in one page, from serial contents previously scattered on several pages, for easy and fast download all.

Adblock - One of the best plug-ins ever written. Adblack allows you to block elements of a web page, images, flash, i-frames, etc This will help make pages load faster and with zero ads!

Adblock is a content filtering plug-in for the Mozilla and Firebird browsers. It is both more robust and more precise than the built-in image blocker.

Adblock allows the user to specify filters, which remove unwanted content based on the source-address. If this sounds complicated, dont worry: its not.

Just add a few filters. Every time a webpage loads, Adblock will intercept and disable the elements matching your filters. See?- nothing to it.

Adblock Filterset.G Updater - This is a companion extension to Adblock and should be used in conjunction with it. This extension automatically downloads the latest version of Filterset.G every 4-7 days. Filterset.G is an excellent set of filters maintained by G for Adblock that blocks most ads on the internet. In addition, this extension allows you to define your own set of filters that you can add along with Filterset.G during an update.

Tabbrowser Preferences - This extension provides a comprehensive UI for changing a number of the hidden tabbed browsing preferences in Firefox. It also provides the ability to control how internal and external links are opened in the browser and how the browser will react when links are sent to it.

IE Tab - IE Tab - an extension from Taiwan, features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. Note, this will also allow you to run Windows Update also.

Wizz RSS News Reader - News is the new frontier for the web. With the up-and-coming rss and atom technologies, news is becoming easier to read and more accessible, but Firefoxs livebookmarks are rather lacking when it comes to features.

Wizz RSS News Reader is the solution. Over the past year, its evolved into a mature feed aggregator. Although the UI lacks polish, it includes a number of powerful features, such as the watch list, OPML support, and the ability to subscribe to podcasts. The documentation is extensive and the author maintains support forums, so its easy to get help too :)

Viamatic foXpose - The Viamatic foXpose plugin is a tiny little extension that lets you view all your tabs inside a browser window.

Duplicate Tab - Duplicate Tab allows you to clone a tab along with its history.

SessionSaver - SessionSaver restores your browser -exactly- as you left it, every startup, every time. Not even a crash will phase it. Windows, tabs, even things you were typing theyre all saved. Use the menu to add + remove sessions; right, shift, or middle-clickin

1. GreaseMonkey.
It's cool. Seriously! It's way, way cool. And I mean that. Totally.

Best plugin evar.

2. I forgot.

Have you tried this?

http://ietab.mozdev.org/

Someone will simply offer funding-free versions of the podcasts on the internet and poeple will flock to these versions. For these people, ANY advertising is far too much.

But are there enough freeloaders out there to threaten profitability? I'm not sure. If you have Firefox, you can block pretty much all advertising with a combination of Flashblock, Adblock, and Adblock Filterset.G. Firefox is a cinch to download, and these extensions take little effort to find and install (I've just linked to them). Yet, very few people run these. I think that the average man puts up with advertising because he doesn't bother to seek alternatives.

Someone will simply offer funding-free versions of the podcasts on the internet and poeple will flock to these versions. For these people, ANY advertising is far too much.

But are there enough freeloaders out there to threaten profitability? I'm not sure. If you have Firefox, you can block pretty much all advertising with a combination of Flashblock, Adblock, and Adblock Filterset.G. Firefox is a cinch to download, and these extensions take little effort to find and install (I've just linked to them). Yet, very few people run these. I think that the average man puts up with advertising because he doesn't bother to seek alternatives.

Install PrefBar in your Mozilla/SeaMonkey/Firefox. Then disable colors and go to /. or refresh the home page. :) Or just use any text Web browsers!

Right here and install it in Mozilla/SeaMonkey/Firefox. Then disable colors and go to /. or refresh the home page. :) Or just use any text Web browsers!

That said, I don't have that problem except for the occasional webpage that forces a new browser window in a way that adblock, noscript and Firefox can't stop (don't ask, I don't know).

#1) Here is a public website that explains exactly what's going on for users http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/using/techinfo /activexupdate.mspx. Disabling ActiveX has nothing to do with this update. This is entirely about Eolas winning a case about a stupid patent. As far as webdevs, you can code around this patent just by following the advice from Microsoft. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /workshop/author/dhtml/overview/activating_activex .asp It's basically a three line change, unpleasant though it may be.
#2) EVERYTHING that does something similar to this is vulnerable to this patent firm. Firefox is vulnerable (and will be sued). Opera is vulnerable (and will be sued). Ditto Adobe, AOL, Apple and many many others. Plus, if they lose, major commercial companies are going to be vulnerable as well.
#3) EVERY browser has an extensibility model, and they can all be good or bad things (and frequently both). Here's a root level vulnerability in a massively popular add-on for Firefox that is cross platform http://mozdev.org/pipermail/greasemonkey/2005-July /004033.html. Blaming ActiveX is naive.
#4) I know this is slashdot, but people really seem to not even read anything about this. I highly encourage you to read up on it... especially realizing that you may ALL be vulnerable to lawsuits.

You can have many of these fine features with Google as well, using Firefox extensions such as GooglePreview, CustomizeGoogle, and LookAhead. You can even jump over and search ask.com (and many others) with one extra click, if you wanna.

Just saying.

The move is a shift for the Hotmail business, which in the past, has charged users who wanted to read their mail using desktop software, rather than a Web browser.

1. Check your Hotmail (and Gmail and Windows Life Mail) through a new proprietary (malware issues?) client that will most likely bombard you with advertisements or
2. Check your Hotmail (and many other mail systems) through good old Thunderbird with no advertisements and source code that you can alter yourself if you ever feel the need to.

It's part of the company's broader Windows Live effort and could eventually serve as a hub, not just for Windows Live Mail, but for other Microsoft Web-based services as well.

• The "Genuine Advantage" checker Web-based service. There to report you for anything you've done to Windows that in any way violates the EULA you blindly clicked during the install.
• Microsofty Ads! The Web-based service that brings advertisements to your desktop so that you can get all the cool new Microsoft products cheaper!
• Member Updates. The client application that annoyingly pops up in the bottom right of your screen as a paper clip to alert you of cool new Microsoft products!
• The Blue Screen of Death inducer--a service that allows Microsoft to trigger your machine remotely to BSOD on you. Why try to recover from an error when you can just reboot?
• The Friendly Survey Service, a program that just tallies up what you got on your machine and phones home to Microsoft so Mr. Gates can have charts presented to him that realistically show the threat of OOo against Office.
• Et cetera...

The move is a shift for the Hotmail business, which in the past, has charged users who wanted to read their mail using desktop software, rather than a Web browser.

1. Check your Hotmail (and Gmail and Windows Life Mail) through a new proprietary (malware issues?) client that will most likely bombard you with advertisements or
2. Check your Hotmail (and many other mail systems) through good old Thunderbird with no advertisements and source code that you can alter yourself if you ever feel the need to.

It's part of the company's broader Windows Live effort and could eventually serve as a hub, not just for Windows Live Mail, but for other Microsoft Web-based services as well.

• The "Genuine Advantage" checker Web-based service. There to report you for anything you've done to Windows that in any way violates the EULA you blindly clicked during the install.
• Microsofty Ads! The Web-based service that brings advertisements to your desktop so that you can get all the cool new Microsoft products cheaper!
• Member Updates. The client application that annoyingly pops up in the bottom right of your screen as a paper clip to alert you of cool new Microsoft products!
• The Blue Screen of Death inducer--a service that allows Microsoft to trigger your machine remotely to BSOD on you. Why try to recover from an error when you can just reboot?
• The Friendly Survey Service, a program that just tallies up what you got on your machine and phones home to Microsoft so Mr. Gates can have charts presented to him that realistically show the threat of OOo against Office.
• Et cetera...

Invaluable extension for me -- I absolutely can't stand Flash ads, most especially those that make noise. Try it.

I usually browse with comments with a medium-high threshold. When I find a thread that looks interesting, I middle-click the comment ID (the "#12345" link after the time in the header) of the top post of said thread to open it in a new tab. Then I change that thread to a -1 threshhold, Nested, and redisplay, to see the whole thing.

You could do this with a greasemonkey script which parses all links on the page, looking for those particular links. It then modifies them to add GET parameters (threshold, mode...).

I have a (grease)monkey on my back... seriously, I'm addicted to all the stuff I can do with that plugin. In fact, the first thing I thought when I read the summary for this was, I wondered if it was too intense to be written as a gm script :)

Okay, that plus I don't think I could copy my profile easily back and forth amongst my XP box and my FF for Mac and a Camino install also, and have it all just work. FF on Mac understood my XP profile just fine.

Unfortunately, FF 1.5 crashes on my Mac almost once a day, and the previous version did not. :(

If you are having problems rendering pages, you can use the IEtab extension to Firefox. It renders the page by imbedding IE into Firefox. See it here http://ietab.mozdev.org/

As far as "So why don't they program firefox to render pages the same way IE does it?" there are 2 reasons.

#1) IE sucks at rendering things. (Try the ACID2 test if you don't believe me)
#2) IE is proprietary, they can't get the source code (legally).

I would prefer the close tab button to be on the right side of the tab, though. Tabs have relatively little space, and in that situation, I think the favicon is more important because it helps differentiate between tabs, so I think the favicon should stay on the left.

As for closing tabs quickly, I would recommend using the Tab Clicking Options extension, which I have set to close tabs on double-click, and the All-in-one Gestures extension, which lets you close tabs by making an "L" gesture.

Both of those take less effort than middle-clicking, and double-clicking on a tab to close it is more consistent with opening a new tab by double-clicking on the tab bar.

I was one of the authors of getmoz [http://getmoz.mozdev.org/%5D that would do just that, dnld the latest, backup your old copy, install the new, migrate bookmarks, etc. I *think* I got started with Mozilla sometime during M20 (? can't recall if this is the right milestone or what ?) Back then one night would reveal a bunch of changes that would/would not be there the next day...a fun time!

What ads?

I run with "prompt always" too. I differ from you in that for the most part I reject all cookies by default, unless it's a forum or some place I'm interested in creating or maintaining a longer-term relationship. Occasionally I'll be too quick to say no, and Cookie Button makes it darned easy to go back and reenable them. Firefox's cookie manager is horrible to navigate -- it's virtually unusable after you've built up a list of a thousand different sites that you've rejected or accepted at some time in the past.

Now, if I only had the ability to set a user-specific skin on Slashdot... but that's a topic for another thread.

That is not a limitation of any specific technology; rather, it is a limitation of mathematics. You have no more business expecting an extension compiled against 1.0.8 to work with anything except 1.0.8, than you have expecting that a CD will play on a cassette walkman.

Oh really?

Perhaps then you can explain how programs written for *DOS* continue to work under XP without recompilation. Or how modern programs come with one exe, and not different ones for 95, 95osr2, 98, 98se, ME, NT3.5, NT4, 2K, XP, XP SP2, and 2003. Or how most binaries that ran on the IBM S/390 in 1970 or whatever still run on IBM's zServers today.

It is CERTAINLY possible to make an ABI so that plug-ins could be compiled once and work for at least long periods of time. Might not be worth it, but it's certainly possible.

Second, when you download a FF extension, do you see links for EVERY VERSION of Firefox? No! If I go to the Flashblock page, I have to choose between the 1.0 and 1.5 series browsers, but that's it. I don't have to choose between the release for 1.0.7 and 1.0.8. That alone pretty much destroys your theory.

Third is what others have already said about why it works with FF in reality.

You sure? I'm pretty sure firefox doesn't natively support viewing the headers. And I assume by Ctrl+I you mean Page Info, as it brings up bookmarks for some reason on Windows (probably because that's what IE does). That dialog only shows "Content-Type" under meta. Now, that would work if you installed this extension.

X-Fry: Please, Mr. Nixon! We're appealing to your sense of decency!

X-Fry: There's a lot about my face you don't know.

X-Fry: People said I was dumb but I proved them!

X-Fry: You mean Bender is the evil Bender? I'm shocked! Shocked! Well not that shocked.

X-Bender: Fry, of all the friends I've had ... you're the first.

X-Bender: Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy -- THAT'S funny.

X-Fry: Make up some feelings and tell her you have them.

X-Fry: Please, Mr. Nixon! We're appealing to your sense of decency!

X-Fry: There's a lot about my face you don't know.

X-Fry: People said I was dumb but I proved them!

X-Fry: You mean Bender is the evil Bender? I'm shocked! Shocked! Well not that shocked.

X-Bender: Fry, of all the friends I've had ... you're the first.

X-Bender: Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy -- THAT'S funny.

X-Fry: Make up some feelings and tell her you have them.

You should use IETab. It uses the IE engine inside a Firefox tab. Technically, it's still IE, but at least you don't have to use IE itself anymore to use the WindowsUpdate site.

I agree, that's why Firefox with the adblock extension is your friend:

http://mozilla.com/

http://adblock.mozdev.org/

And they even have a Firefox searchbar plugin. Great, thanks for that!

You are aware that a Firefox user can add any number of search engines as plug-ins to the search bar, no? Mycroft is the project.

It is true that 95% of users don't use GPG, but I'd regard that as a flaw in and of itself. Mind you, most e-mail programs (including, IIRC, thunderbird) don't support GPG, although some do support a limited range of digital certificates.

For some time, I have had a media box set up at home (behind the couch) running Azureus. Combine that with Hamachi, Firefox, the ConQuery extension and the WebUI plugin for Azureus, and I am a right click away from downloading any torrent I want whereever my laptop is. Tivo's got me beat though, because I can't do it from my phone (yet...).

On the other hand, I've got Tivo beat because I can do what I want with the media I get this way.

Probably because it's a poor Mozgest knockoff mixing in autoscroll features? Bundling two extensions into one is hardly innovative. And it's always a step or two behind the competition.

These are the Firefox extensions I can't live without

GooglePreview:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=189

Venkman Javascript Debugger (for 1.5):
http://getahead.ltd.uk/ajax/venkman

Live HTTP Headers:
http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/

Peter

One of the finalists really stood out to me, Platypus, which allows users to dynamically edit the sites they visit and then be able to save the changes to a GreaseMonkey script. It works great on getting rid of some of those annoyances on sites you visit.

I am not entirely certain, but I seem to remember http://ietab.mozdev.org/ having the ability to set websites to auto-load in an IE window embeded within a tab.

http://adblockplus.mozdev.org/

If only AdBlock had been updated for the competition... That's probably the 1 addon I couldn't live without.

Do they still have advertising on the Internets ? , even Symantec block them in their products thesedays

thats what happens when you ram them down peoples throats, gone are the days of doing the web for fun , everybody is so motivated by greed that the best they can come up with for a billion connected computers is advertising, sad really

the Mozilla Archive Format....

Regexp searches would be great, but I imagine too much processing required? --- http://gmailskins.mozdev.org/

The problem with S/MIME is that you need to buy a certificate which costs $$$. ...I want to see PGP/GPG support in email programs.

You can get personal certificates free from Thawte. Also, PGP add-ons are widely available, eg for Mozilla/Thunderbird, Enigmail hits the spot.

What would be really nice is a button (in the window status bar maybe) that lets one enable/disable the Flash plugin at will.

Of course, there is a Firefox extension exactly for this purpose.

This is a *geek* website. We *automate* things!

1) Go get Greasemonkey.

2) Go get the CoralCache Slashdot Greasemonkey plugin.

3) Profit!

So tell me, how did the phishers manage to gain control of amazon.com?

You don't mean to say that you actually click on links in your email without checking that they go to the domain you always use in your existing business relationship, do you? I find it hard to believe that anyone technically proficient could be so foolish.

Even if you do click on links, a system like Firefox's petname extension can ensure that it's obvious whether the link you've followed has led to the right place or not.