Has the question of just how many websites there is on the internet ever occurred to you? Well, there are almost 2 billion websites on the internet; only just a tenth of those are active. This means the vast majority of websites are just docile; actually, some of them have never ever been used. Interestingly, hundreds of those active websites account for most of the internet’s activities. Some of the most dominant websites on the internet are Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Anyways, it’s quite obvious that there are many useful websites that one might never get to know about. Hence, herein I’ll discuss some interesting & useful websites you probably have never heard about.

Privnote (www.privnote.com)

This website allows you to have secure communications with someone through email. Here is how it works, when you go on the site you enter the message that you want to send. When you finish composing the message, the site creates a URL link of the message for you. You then email the link to your recipient. When the recipient clicks on the link they then can read the message; as soon as they finish reading the message, it instantly self-destructs. This is a very secure way of exchanging sensitive messages since no one will ever recover or access the messages.

PDF Drive (www.pdfdrive.net)

As the adage goes, ‘knowledge is power’ & the Bible excerpt, ‘people perish because of lack of knowledge’, knowledge acquisition is important. Therefore, reading is very necessary, great leaders are great readers! This website contains at least 80 million pdf books that are available for free download. The beauty of the site is that there are no limits on the number of books you can download.

Grammarly (www.grammarly.com)

It is important in any field of endeavour, be it in business or academics, to come up with write-ups that are free of spelling errors and with correct use of grammar. Write-ups are a major component of corporate or academic endeavours and how they are presented has a bearing on your image as an individual or a company. Thus, it is important to come up with well-written write-ups. This site can do spelling & grammar checks for you with ease. You just have to copy & paste the text you want to be scrutinized; you can even copy & paste whole documents. There is also an option to use their mobile app; it’s available for download from the Google Playstore.

Firefox Send (https://send.firefox.com)

Here is the thing, the Gmail file size limit is 25 mb, though there is an option to use Google Drive to circumvent that limitation. However, this site offers a more flexible option on sending large files through email. Here is how it works; you upload the file (any format) you want to send on the site and then the site converts it into a URL link. You then email the link to the recipient. They then click on the link to download the file; as soon as they finish downloading the file, it vanishes from the internet. This is a very private, secure & easy way to share large files online. Security is guaranteed due to encryption. You can either check or you can receive confirmation notifying you that the file has been downloaded by the recipient. The site recommends the file to be anything up to 1 GB in size for optimum convenience. Alternatively, you can use www.wetransfer.com which allows for files up to 2 GB in size.

Mega (www.mega.nz)

Cloud storage has taken centre stage in offering the ease of storing &/or backing up huge amounts of data online. There are many cloud storage service providers but the reason why I had to point out this site is the amount of free cloud storage space they offer. They can give you 50 GB of free cloud storage space & they have end-to-end encryption meaning that your data cannot be intercepted online.

Small PDF (www.smallpdf.com)

I have lost count of the number of times people have asked for my assistance pertaining to editing, extracting etc information on pdfs. A lot of people struggle with handling & manipulating pdfs. This website makes life easy for you regarding virtually any pdf-related issue. It offers tools namely, compression, conversions such as ppt to pdf, jpg to pdf, excel to pdf, word to pdf (or vice versa). Other tools it offers are editing a pdf, merging pdfs, splitting a pdf, rotating a pdf, e-signing a pdf or unlocking a pdf.

F-secure (www.f-secure.com)

This is a platform that has a free tool for scanning & cleaning your PC online. If you log onto https://www.f-secure.com/en_US/web/home_US/router-checker/ you can get a free diagnosis done for you to see if your Wi-Fi router has been illegally accessed by hackers or not.

How Stuff Works (www.howstuffworks.com)

This site features an infinite number of articles on virtually any conceivable topic. The articles come in the form of textual, diagrammatical or video illustrations. It’s a great site for getting to learn on virtually any topic.

The number of websites I have covered in this article is a tiny tip of the iceberg; there are plenty more useful websites that people may not know about. If you have come across some useful websites that you feel may not be well-known, feel free to drop them in the comments below.