Free Stuff That Makes Surfing Less Annoying
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Pat's fave five, er, 12, tools for safer browsing.
By Patrick Norton http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/downloadoftheday/story/0,24330,3520601,00.html
I
go to strange websites and not-so-strange websites that often have shockingly
bad taste in advertisers. As in advertisers who buy pop-ups that try to load bad
things onto my system -- spyware, for example, trying to track where I browse.
If I were using OS X on a Mac, I probably wouldn't have to worry about this at
all. There just aren't enough Macs out there to attract your average
egg-sucking spyware-writing weasel.
Alas, I
currently live on Windows XP. Thanks to a never-ending series of giant gaping
security flaws in the operating system, I get to worry about just about every
spyware-writing weasel, noxious little virus coder, or creative little hacker
looking to snoop. And as Blaster has so aptly demonstrated, not clicking on
file attachments, while a fine start and mad important, just isn't enough.
So there are
some tools I run to make my time online safer and severely less annoying.
Spyware
sucks
I don't know
how it gets there, but sometimes I find spyware loaded on my system. Weird
little applications designed to, well, I don't care what they were designed to
do. I want them off. Maybe I'll leave the cookies, but the rest of it? I want
it off my system.
Since spyware
constantly changes and evolves, you have to download updates for your spyware
removal tools. I run not one, but two spyware removers in the hope that between
the two, I'll nail all the weirdness on my system. Sometimes one finds something
the other doesn't. The two tools?
Pop-ups
suck (and sometimes load spyware)
I hate
pop-ups. Not only are they annoying, some of 'em have the nasty habit of trying
to load the ever-so-annoying spyware onto my system. So I make 'em disappear.
Ever since I installed my fave free browser Mozilla,
no more pop-ups! Here's all I had to do.
1.
Open the Edit/Preferences window.
2.
Double-click Privacy & Security.
3.
Check "Block unrequested popup windows."
If you're the
type who just can't give up browsing on Internet Explorer, don't worry. I did a
quick poll of the TSS crew to find out what folks are using. Most say download Pow! from
AnalogX, and our own
Viruses
really, really suck
You should
run an antivirus tool, right? Most folks don't want to pay for one; I gave up
on Norton Antivirus (no blood relation, in case you're wondering) when they
stopped the free lifetime updates. Fortunately, the fine folks at Grisoft.com
have free antivirus software that's updated regularly. It's called AVG Anti-Virus. Want
additional options? Pandasoft has a free online antivirus tool called ActiveScan.
Hackers
suck even worse
Blaster
hammered quite a few folks. All you needed to do to stay safe was run Windows Update
or a firewall. Yes, even the weak firewall
built in to XP would have kept your system safe. Even without the threat of
Blaster, you should run a firewall just to make sure any hacker who scans your
system finds its digital doors closed, locked, and for all intensive purposes,
invisible.
Though the
company isn't doing much to support it, ZoneLabs still offers the fairly stable
free firewall ZoneAlarm.
Heads up:
Kevin Rose, our Dark Tipper, has a roundup of personal firewalls coming on
Monday. Stay tuned!
I prefer to
run a hardware firewall instead. Most home routers, such as a Linksys EtherFast
cable/DSL router, do just enough firewalling to keep your safe from all but a
dedicated hacker.
If you don't
want to spend $50 on a router, build a dedicated firewall from a free download
from SmoothWall, IPCop Firewall, or
ClarkConnect. Download the ISO files,
burn to a CD-R, then boot in a PC to turn it into a dedicated firewall to stand
between you and all the weasels on the Internet.
Originally posted September 11, 2003