Follow these easy steps to make it happen.

First download Firefox with Google toolbar by pressing the button in the right sidebar of this site or right here.

Yes I make almost two cents for everyone that does this, wohoo, I’m rich!
Now please remember that the goal if this tutorial is removing all ads. Even the Firefox button will be removed after you have followed these steps.

Next install and start Firefox.
If you have been using IE (Internet Explorer), import everything into Firefox, and set it as your default browser. I promise you won’t regret it!

Install this plugin and this plugin, then restart Firefox.

Just press the “Add to Firefox” button. And yes, as some of you might notice. My Firefox does not look like yours. I’m using a portable edition of Firefox, to show you how you do it from a fresh install.

Press the “Install Now” button. Do this for the “Adblock Plus: Element hiding helper also”. The other link, or here.

Click the “Restart Firefox” button.

When you restart you get this dialog:

Next choose the subscriptions you want. I use all of them.
In the above dialog, just select the first item “EasyList (USA)” and click “Subscribe” (sorry for the misleading screenshot). The dialog closes when you do this. So we need to open it up again.

In the upper right corner you now have the “Adblock”-button. Click the small arrow on the right side of the “ABP”-button. Choose “preferences” from the drop down menu.

Choose “Add filter subscription” from the “Filters”-menu.

Then pick the next item on the list click “OK”. Repeat the two above steps for the three remaining lists.
The rest of the options are fine.

Only one more thing to do, Click the small arrow on the “ABP”-button –> “Options” –> “Show tabs on Flash and Java”. Deselect it (click). Some email services like Yahoo have some problems with this setting turned on (don’t know if it’s fixed).

That’s it! No more ads!

Here is a before and after screenshot of this article.

Before:

After:

All the ads are gone!

On some pages “Adblock” can be a bit too aggressive. You can disable it on a web page by clicking the small arrow to the left

First you need to download Pidgin Portable, you will find it here. It’s the big red button! After the download is finished press the back button, because you also need the Pidgin-OTR-plugin. You find this a bit down the page, under features. Next we need to unpack the applications. Start with Pidgin.

On the first screen just click next:

On the next screen just click next:

On the third dialog, you have to choose where to unpack Pidgin.

This can be directly on your desktop, or on a USB-stick.

In the picture above the unpacker has found a USB-stick attached to my computer, and selects it as default. If you don’t have a USB-stick, just choose your desktop.

Next we unpack the Pidgin-OTR-plugin. Just click next.

Then we have to choose the placement. This has to be the same folder as you unpacked Pidgin to. It should be named PidginPortable:

In my case it found the USB-stick that’s attached to my computer. But in your case it might be the PidginPortable folder on your desktop.

That’s it. You now have installed PidginPortable with the OTR-encryption plugin. Next we have to start up and configure the application.

Configuration

In this configuration example I will use my gmail account (You can get a free gmail account here). But you can use any of the supported IM protocols that Pidgin can use. For instance your MSN account (windows live messenger), or MySpace IM account.

The first time we start Pidgin we are presented with this dialog:

When you click the “Add” button, this dialog shows up. Choose “Google Talk” in the protocol list:

To fill out this dialog do this:

1. If your email address is john.doe@gmail.com, your “screen name” will be john.doe
2. You don’t have to change the domain.
3. Forget about the “Resource” (Google has a feature that lets you be logged on at different places at the same time. So you can have one “Resource” thats called “Work” and another thats called “Home”. If anything, you should name it “Portable”).
4. Password is your gmail password.
5. Put you name In the “Local alias”.
6. If you want Pidgin to remember your password, put a checkmark in the box.
7. If you want Pidgin to check your email, (you guessed it).
8. “Buddy Icon” A small picture that will show up next to your name in the “Budy List”.

Klick “Save”. Your Done!

Close the “Accounts” window.

Now we have to configure the OTR-plugin. In your “Buddy List” go to “Tools” –> “Plugins”

A bit down the list you find “Off-the-Record Messaging” Tick the checkbox.

Then click the “Configure Plugin” button.

In this dialog choose your account (you need one key pr. account) Then press the “Generate” button.

The key generation can take several minutes, when it’s done you’ll see that you have gotten a “fingerprint” for your chosen account. Close all windows except the “Buddy List” (and perhaps this window:-).

In the “Buddy List” click the “Buddy”-menu –> “Add Buddy”

As you can see the “screen name” is the email address of the person you want to add.

And the “Alias” is what you want to see in the “Buddy List”

When you double click a contact in the “Buddy List” this window comes up. Click the OTR button in the lower right corner. Then you see the “Attempting tos start a private…”

You are now communicating securely with the person on the other end. But you should verify/authenticate the encryption key from the other party. To do this right-click the OTR-button in the lower right corner and choose “Authenticate buddy”.

In this dialog you enter a word or a phrase (sentence) that only you and the other person knows about. This word can be delivered by encrypted email or over the phone.

The same dialog shows up at the friend you are authenticating with.

When you both have entered the same secret, this window shows up. You have now successfully authenticated with the party on the other end.

This can be verified if you look at the icon in the lower right corner. The icon should be yellow and the text should say private.

Thats it. You are now communicating securely with the person at the other end. The only way someone could “wiretap” or intercept this communication is with a keylogger or other malware/virus/trojan installed on any of the machines you are using. It cannot be intercepted in traffic, because the encryption is happening on the machine you are using before it is sent over the internet/network.

If you had the patience to read this entire tutorial, congratulations!

Thank you for reading this howto. Next I’ll write about encrypted email.

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