"Stan's Computer" <vze2vfni1@...> wrote:
>
> On 17 Oct 2007 Mircea Pauca wrote:
>
> > What I hate: unknown e-critters that launch
> > uncontrollable code; ActiveX; Flash (except when
>
> Most browsers can be set to not launch anything automatically.
>
> > Any one more in the know can point to more
> > such current and near-future annoyances/threats
> > and ways to understand and protect from ?
>
> Firefox, with the noscript add-on. You may also like the "adblock
plus"
> add-on.

I'm on slow dial-up (most of the time). What I do for this problem is
delete the flash program and use Webwasher to filter undesirable
content. I don't miss Flash at all (except when I *did* want to see
Amanda's autism videos on YouTube). When I go to a website that
*requires* flash I cross it off my list. Don't use Java either or
Internet Explorer (it used to annoy me greatly by taking ages to load
some flash content (even though I had no Flash!) and then tell me to
go to Macromedia website to get the Flash plug-in). I wonder if it
still does that? - who cares?

Here are my current statistics from Webwasher:
-------------------------------------------
Filtered images: 2,921
Filtered windows: 0
Filtered scripts: 877
Filtered layers: 0
Filtered frames: 239
Filtered forms: 0
Filtered cookies: 0
Good cookies: 0
Cookies sent: 0
Images received: 9,332
Connections made: 16,648
Kilobytes sent: 13.4 MB
Kilobytes received ...
directly: 132.9 MB
via proxy: 0 KB

Current connections:0
Statistics since: Mon, 3. Sep 2007
-------------------------------------------

and that's just with the default configuration. You can make it more
strict to block more stuff (but, to the point where some sites will
not work).

I think the only solution is to "vote" for better / simpler designed
websites by using them over the overly-complex bandwidth intensive
ones (if you have a choice).

June