Most of you here (should) already know about Mozilla/Firefox. I was suprised tho yesterday when one of our members thanked me for mentioning it since he had never used it. So for those of you that have it here are some good tools for it. For those of you who do not have it and are still using IE, for the love of Luthor, please go to http://www.mozilla.org and download Mozilla if you want a secure, web standards-compliant browser that includes a great email client, irc client, and html editor and many other great tools. If you just want a browser without all those other apps grab Firefox which is basically Mozilla without the kitchen sink. And if you are using Outlook, check out Thunderbird, much safer than lookOut (although I would hope all of you aren't knuckleheaded enough to open attachments...) Anyway, these are all tools I use myself to put up a first line of defense against the evil known as the modern interwebnetshitpool :p
Ok on to the goodies. First of all let's get the web ads partially under control with a simple hosts file which blackholes web requests to ad servers. This isn't necessarily a Moz plugin but it is effective for any app that tries to contact ad servers. Download and install, you'll save yourself from being tracked by web bugs and other graphic ads. http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html
Next let's get rid of disgusting, obnoxious and the "so 90's" flash crap infesting the pages. Of course some flash is wanted so you will be able to click on it to play it however the rest (ads and other shite) will be bocked from view, so much nicer. Head to this page http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ and click on Installation then Install Flashblock. it will automatically install the plugin into your browser.
The next one is the indispensable adblock plugin. I used to just right click on ad images and select "Block Images From This Server" but that just hides the ads. Adblock uses regular expression pattern matching to catch all ads and prevent them from loading in the first place (or hide them if you prefer to allow ad servers to track you and consume your bandwidth). Grab adblock from here: http://adblock.mozdev.org/ I have been using a pretty effective filter list for a while which I have put up online here: http://the.whole.net/~g8keeper/adblock_filters.txt Download those and use the import feature in adblock (Tools menu, Adblock, Preferences, Adblock Options, Import Filters). After installing adblock you will have an "Adblock" area in your lower window. If you view a page that has ads or alternatively has legit images that adblock is blocking, just click on the "adblock" and it will show you every element in the page adblock is or could be blocking.
Finally, hop into your regular mozilla prefs and set animated gifs to rotate *only once* (you can always refresh the page or image if you want to see it again). Mozilla, Preferences, Privacy and Security, Images... "Animated Images Should Loop" set to "Once". I'll also assume everyone has turned off popups but if not: Mozilla, Preferences, Privacy and Security, Popup windows... check "Block unrequested popup windows".
After you have installed all these goodies give your VirusMaster 2000 a reboot and feel the joy of blocking some of the crap shoved in your face on a daily basis. It's almost impossible for me to view web pages anymore without all these tools to shield my eyes from flashing ads and repeating banners.
Join us next time for a lesson in effective management, security and privacy of cookies (the other evil trackers).
p.s. If you are still using IE perhaps you will reconsider after visiting these pages as well:
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/06/27/1436213.shtml
[CERT recommends Mozilla, Firefox"]
http://www.safecenter.net/UMBRELLAWEBV4/ie_unpatched/ [Unpatched Internet Explorer Bugs]
http://ashitaka-san.home.comcast.net/yayrant/ieharmful.html [Internet Explorer Considered Harmful]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2103152/
[Slate, MS's *own* magazine says... "How Mozilla's Firefox trumps Internet Explorer."] |
|
