Somewhat Safe, Less Restrictive Web Browsing Tactics That Work Almost as Well (Page 3 of 4)

I'll remind you once again that there is no such thing as a 100% safe browsing experience. There will always be a weakness somewhere that someone knows how to exploit.

The following suggestions are good for all users of the web, not just epileptics looking for protection. If you're concerned about staying safer on the internet, I recommend reading through.

Use Ad Blocking Software

Half of you reading this have already invested in ad blocking software, so you can skip down. For those of you not in the know, 3rd party software companies create software that selectively blocks ads from most popular advertising firms. This leaves big holes in web pages where crazy blinking pop-ups and banners would have been.

Important note: ad blocking software would not have protected people from the epilepsy attack. Ad Block software will not block just any old image. It only blocks known ads and malware. To protect against that exact style of attack, you still need to turn off image animation (page 2) and selectively block web 2.0 (below).

This is different from your browser's built-in pop-up blocking feature. That feature just stops abberant ad windows from coming up. It doesn't distinguish between legit pop-ups and ads.

There's a huge array of popular ad blocking software, so I'll just link to LifeHacker's post on ad blocking software for Firefox. There are many good suggestions and links to ad blocking software. You really can't go wrong no matter what you choose there.

Poor Man's Ad Blocking on Windows

Windows 2000/XP/Vista users have a free alternative for blocking advertisers called the hosts file. The best part is that implementing this hack is easy and covers all of your internet software, not just your web browser. The downside is that if there's a site you need to unblock, it's a pain in the ass to manually allow sites.

Still, if you're willing to brave the minor inconveniences, the steps are easy:

1. In Windows Explorer, make a backup copy of the "hosts" file located in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc by right-clicking on the hosts file, choosing Copy from the pop-up menu, then going to the Edit menu and choosing Paste. If you can't figure out this step, that's OK because your hosts file probably doesn't need to be backed up, unless it's larger than 1k in size.
2. Click on this download link and save the file as "C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\hosts" without any file extension but with the quotes around the filename! When you are asked if you want to overwrite the existing file, click OK or Yes.

This little hack comes courtesy of the folks at MVPs who compiled a list of advertisers and malware sites to block. I've hosted a version on my site because I think their download and installation instructions are too complicated for beginners. However, it's worth it to learn and frequent their download site so you stay up-to-date with the latest changes.

Selective Web 2.0 Blocking

If you're an Internet Explorer user, refer back to page 2 about how to disable web 2.0 and set up a list of trusted sites where you need web 2.0 features. If you're a Firefox user, you're going to need a plug-in and the latest version of Firefox before proceeding.

Here are links to recommended plus-ins for Firefox. For each link you visit, click the "Add to Firefox" button and follow the on-screen instructions:

• NoScript - highest rated web 2.0 (scripting) blocker around. If you use this plug-in (and I recommend you do), please visit the NoScript site and click the Donate button.
• AdBlock Plus - if you don't want to mess with hosts files, and you didn't follow the LifeHacker link above, then please do download this plug-in.

Configuring and using these plug-ins is beyond the scope of this post. Both plug-in providers provide good support, and I'm sure Firefox fanboys will be more than happy to help you out here if you post your questions in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Flock Users :(

Still researching options for you users. Check back later.

Next: Some Knowledge About How And Why This Stuff Happens >>

[ tech, psa published on 2008-04-01 | Permalink (656) | ]