Sweaty Firefox

[drscott]

Just mowed, edged, string-trimmed, and swept myself into a stupor. My back hurts.

A few weeks ago I had to spend two hours (at least) updating my adware removal tools and chasing after spyware; a web page had installed about 20 different forms of malware. It took days to get them all. I don't doubt that most home users are now running machines with 100s of different infestations.

I've been relatively free of viral nastiness -- I have a hardware firewall box protecting the home network, antivirus tools, high-security settings on most things, and have never suffered any infestations until now. The key problem is Microsoft -- they installed many "extensible" features with a mind to making workgroup networks easy enough for any idiot, but the same "features," along with a refusal to use a standard buffer package to avoid overwrites, makes their systems unusually vulnerable for home use. When you add in their overwhelming market dominance, Microsoft software is the target of choice for any miscreant.

One easy and useful thing to do if you're stuck with XP: at least dump IE in favor of Firefox, the Netscape-based Mozilla Project browser. I've been using it for a few days, and aside from losing the Google toolbar I've grown dependent on, it's great -- noticeably faster and much less likely to allow harmful ActiveX controls to operate. For those few sites that can't operate without IE, keep it around, just set Firefox as your default browser.

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

[big nod.] You've described my solution well: firewall at home, antivirus tools, Firefox. At work, in fact, our sysadmin gave us a couple of pointers to malware-cleaning programs and basically told us to quit using IE. I would have been amused except that it really is that bad.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Yes, it really is that bad. And the weirdest bit is that "entrepreneurs" are getting paid to add dozens of different spybot hooks onto a single page. It is easy to find places on the net where they offer to pay you for this "service."

Gives marketing a bad name....