You know them, those handy programs. You download them, learn to work with them and then you can't live without them! We have put together a top 19 of programs that meet this characteristic. Of course everyone has their personal preference, so pick out what you think is interesting!
Internet and network
Tip 01: Move like a ghost
While using the internet, services do everything they can to find out as much as possible about you. Your location, interests, websites you visit and other personal matters are recorded and linked by advertising networks, among others. This can hardly be prevented by using apps and because we leave a lot of information lying around ourselves, but with Ghostery you can at least arm yourself while surfing. The program works in all major browsers, except Internet Explorer, and does everything it can to stop trace scripts and other tricks. As soon as you visit a website, Ghostery shows how many 'digital sniffers' were stopped.
Tip 02: Suppress commercials
We all know how nice it is to watch TV without commercial breaks. You see so many advertisements on the internet that they are sometimes very distracting from the content. As an indication: when you visit the website of De Telegraaf you can just see 20 or more advertising messages. Adblock Plus is a free extension for all major browsers to suppress ads. You will notice that social media, websites and search engine results will look very different. A counter shows how many commercials are stopped.
Because the Internet is powered by advertising revenue, some websites have a detector for Adblock and similar programs. You can leave the website unseen or if you still want to view the content, you can decide to temporarily disable Adblock Plus.
Tip 03: Network Meter
Do you have any idea what programs on your computer connect to the Internet? A virus scanner that updates itself, Dropbox and maybe Microsoft Office during installation. Whatever number you call out, chances are you're way off the mark. There may be only a few programs on your computer that don't connect regularly. GlassWire maps this neatly and shows which programs are connecting and to which server. You can also see how much data traffic is being used. You can view totals or request this information specifically per program. This way you can easily find out what, for example, an evening watching series with Netflix or Popcorn Time uses data traffic.
If you are using the Windows default firewall, in the tab you can firewall deny access to certain programs. However, this is almost impossible as almost all software requires a connection, for example to get recent updates.
Optimize Windows
Tip 04: Cleaning action
Almost everyone is now familiar with the cleaning program CCleaner, so we will not do more than mention this program. Clean Master is less known and an excellent complement to CCleaner. Clean Master is especially good at detecting unnecessary files from programs. Of course, all standard cleaning routines are also present to remove temporary/unnecessary files from, among other things, your browser. According to the makers, Clean Master frees up an average of 2 GB of disk space. This is pretty close to our findings. The first time you use Clean Master, your cleaning action will open up even more space.
Although Clean Master is safe to use, this cleaning program also comes with a warning. Always take a critical look at which parts you have removed and cleaned.
