As part of our celebration of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we'll be posting quick writeups on our favorite Firefox add-ons that enhance the security and privacy of your web browsing experience. We don't necessarily recommend you install every single add-on we show here; just that you evaluate them to see if they meet your needs. Questions? Leave them in the comments!

Today's add-on is Locationbar². Unless you're pretty geeky, sometimes it can be difficult to tell what website you're visiting just by looking at the location bar in your browser window. Those URIs (commonly referred to as a "web address") get really long and complicated! Just look at this:

If you're not sure what you're looking at, it might be really hard to know if you're actually visiting a real KU website or if this is a fake--and that can get you into trouble. You might think you were logging into a real KU website with your KU Online ID and password, only to later find out you'd given your password to a phisher who'd set up a fake website to trick you!

That's where Locationbar² comes in. It darkens in the domain name of the web address you're visiting. Have a look at this--it's the same web address above, only this time with Locationbar² installed.

See where the red arrow is pointing? Locationbar² has darkened in the "ku.edu" domain name, which lets us know we're at a real KU website. If you saw something like "kuedu.fake-scam-website.kueducom.net" darkened in, you'd know it was bogus and that you shouldn't give up any personal information to that website.

You can get Locationbar² by searching for it on https://addons.mozilla.org or by clicking here.