01 January 2024

Get rid of Google's annoying sign in popup

 


It's like a horror movie ghost giving you a jump-scare each time you open a website. Google somehow thinks it'd be a great idea to take away focus from whatever we are doing, and present us with the most annoying thing on the internet: The Popup!

Thankfully, it's possible to get rid of this. 

On Firefox:

1. Install the Adguard extension.

2. Enable Adguard to run even in private tabs (if you use private tabs).

3. In Adguard's preferences, select "Filters" and then enable the "Annoyances" toggle button.

4. Now click on the "Annoyances" section to view all the annoyances that are to be blocked, and enable any of the annoyances you want to get rid of (for example, the "AdGuard Popups filter").

When using Firefox on your mobile phone, you can use just the uBlockOrigin addon, and in the addon's settings, activate filters for uBlockOrigin annoyances and AdGuard annoyances. Both need to be on.

Some details on using uBlockOrigin instead, are given here

Simply add this in uBlockOrigin's "My filters":

||accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe/select$subdocument

On Google Chrome:

This of course works only if you are signed in. Direct link.

1. Go to "My Account" : "Security" ( https://myaccount.google.com/security ).
2. Click on "See all connections" link in "Your connections to third party apps & services".
3. Click on the gear at the top of the "Third party apps & services" page.
4. Disable the "Signing in with Google" prompt.

The help section of Chrome has some additional suggestions.

 

That's it. Enjoy your popup-free browsing! Some other people have given the same solutions here and here too.

08 November 2023

Ten minute email id

Ever been to a website that required you to enter your email id to sign up for even a short trial, and doing so, exposed you to their spammy newsletters and promotional emails? Well, 10minutemail is here to rescue you from that.

I came across this interesting concept https://10minutemail.com/ (there's also https://10minutemail.net/), which allows you to keep extending the 10 minute limit. If you refresh the page, you won't lose that email id until the 10 minutes expires. 

I tried sending an email from my real email id to the address shown, and sure enough, within a minute, 10minutemail showed the test email in its inbox. You'll have to scroll down for it.

It's interesting that people actually created such a concept.

Tips: 

  • Did you know that GMail ignores the dot in an email id? For example, if you have an email id as brad.pitt@gmail.com, you can write it as bradpitt@gmail.com, and the email will still reach the same person.
  • Did you know that you can add anything after a plus symbol, and those parts get ignored by GMail? For example, if you subscribe to a newsletter from vox, you can provide your email id to them as bradpitt+vox@gmail.com. The "+vox" will be ignored, but when you receive the email, the email id will be shown as "bradpitt+vox@gmail.com". This makes it much easier to filter emails and recognize where it's coming from.