In the spirit of some of the “dodgy” threads I’ve seen here lately, does anyone know how to prevent some of the more irritating side effects of browsing (I’ve answered as best I can where I know).
The obvious answer is to avoid any questionable sites, but you still get tricked and I’ve had problems with MSN and Yahoo interferring where they weren’t wanted.
Multi-spawning pop-ups
I use Pop-Up Stopper by Panicware. I also block all cookies (Tools/Internet Options/Privacy). No problems so far.
External involuntary changing of my homepage
Doesn’t seem to happen too often, but still irritating. MSN seems to do it every so often.
Unwanted shortcuts/favourites self-creating
Again, not a regular problem, but still irritating.
Blocking cookies will not stop Pop-ups.
You need to block scripts.
Of course, this also blocks many features (if not all) that use java but don’t use pop-ups. Small price to pay, IMO.
emmy66 is right. No matter how “neat” a lot of active scripting tricks are, it will always leave open the possibility of scuzzhumpers (and their web design gurus) doing that sort of crap.
The only useful solution is to turn off active scripting completely, and to turn it back on, occasionally, for sites that can’t reasonably be designed without it (online banking etc.) If this cripples navigation on some idjit’s vanity page, that’s their fault (and their bad design), not yours.
Hmm, this got me thinking… you have the trusted/internet/restricted sites which you can configure as you wish. I think I am going to try not allowing any scripts on the internet and then adding my banking sites etc to the “trusted” list. That should do it.
What I would like to see is this: Buttons at the top which you could select: Restricted (From now on, until I hit another button, everything is restricted. Useful when navigating porn and other unsafe waters) Internet (From now on, until I select another option, use the normal internet security options) Safe (From now on… etc)
In other words, have the possibility of setting security for periods of time rather than website names. But I do not think any browser offers this possibility
Nice idea with the buttons. The nearest I could get was this, although I think I’m going to try that trusted/internet suggestion:
With IE6 you can click Tools/Internet Options/Security and then adjust the slider to High (which I think cuts out all scripting, but seeing as I first heard about scripts today . . . :)). It’s not as useful as your idea, but if you are talking about significant time periods between switching then it might be useful. Now that cookies have been seperated into a different tab, you don’t need to worry about accidentally switching them off.