Download Firefox

Spyware is something which plagues all of us to one degree or another. What IS “spyware”? Well it’s a program or script that is installed without your permission and it sits in the background and does things to your system that you don’t want done.

“Adware” is one form, and probably the most common form, of Spyware. These show up when you go online as ads in popup windows that you didn’t open offering products or services for things you didn’t ask for. They also get information about you which then gets sold to marketers so that you get more spam and more popups.

Obviously, if you have spyware now you’ll want to get some anti-spyware software to get rid of it. Whenever I use a pc I use Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition from Lavasoft and Spybot Search & Destroy. And they’ve never let me down. I use them both in combination, as I’ve found that the two together catch virtually everything.

Once you’ve handled any existing software, one of the greatest things about Firefox is that it helps you avoid getting spyware in the future.

Here’s how one source explained it: “Microsoft’s approach to designing Internet Explorer was an optimistic view of security. Internet Explorer provided the maximum amount of capability with the hope of providing mechanisms that could and would be used to avoid risks. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work that way: ActiveX lets people silently access the operating system, the browser itself, and applications, and the Security Zone Model can allow the silent downloading, installation, and execution of programs without your knowledge. Powerful stuff that you can use to do great things? Sure! But sadly, it doesn’t have enough safeguards, and as a result, ActiveX and the Security Zone model are used together as the primary mechanism to deploy spyware.” Additionally, viruses et al are mainly created by hackers specifically for Internet Explorer users, since that is the browser that the majority of internet users currently use. They don’t really bother so much with users of other browsers. And this buys Firefox even more time to monitor security issues and release updates for the future to protect you from the evil hackers."

For more information on security issues and all the reasons that Firefox is the best browser on Earth, check out the Firefox Website.

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Tags: Extensions & Plugins, Firefox Browser, Firefox Help

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 21st, 2006 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Extensions & Plugins, Firefox Browser, Firefox Help. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.