No one likes annoying pop ups, annoying spyware and annoying worms that affect our computers and slow down our web browsing speed. How can we be sure of what websites to trust and what to not trust? This is a difficult question to ask if your pretty new to computers but others might find it a bit understanding.
I’ll cover some of the web browsers. Internet Explorer is not the only program you can use to visit websites. You have to understand, Internet Explorer is a product of Microsoft and Microsoft is one of the giant companies that are being targeted by hackers every day due to their non-open-source policies. Since Internet explorer is being exploited so much and hack attempts occur to Internet Explorer (IE), it is perhaps that most fragile internet browser out there. And yet, pretty much everyone uses this; It is
acceptable and safe if you are under an anti virus application such as Norton but lets say you do not have any anti virus, you will not last long.
The safest way to surf the way, perhaps is by having a firewall or some sort of anti virus running at all times. The reason a firewall is necessary (not the xp built in firewall, what piece of s***) because a firewall prevents all incoming ports to your Computer. Ports are like doors to your computer, the more you have open the easier for people to invade you, this is why routers are wonderful. Routers (gadgets that enable to use the same internet for more then one computer under a network) will also block all ports, this is very nice and if your routers enable you to see your stats, you would see the attack attempts at your router. An anti virus works similarly, the second you download a file or run a program that it does not know it will check it and if it contains virus it will alert you and ask you to remove it..this is good..until the hacker has some sort of remote access to your computer then he can simply installs his virus on your computer without you even noticing about it.
“If I download nothing, my computer will be safe” - this is a false statement. Nothing is fully secured, you think by not downloading or installing anything you are safe? well, I can use my Ip Scanner, put a range of numbers and get thousands of Ip addresses and hack any computer I want. Someone else can do this to, and for all we know you could be his target and once again if you have ports closed it will be difficult for him to enter your computer. Once upon a time, I disconnected my router and connected my internet directly to the modem and I turned off my firewall as well as all other protection applications to test how long my computer would last. This was a test experiment on a clean Windows XP Home. Anyway, I left the computer for 3 hours and as I returned everything looked the same until I turned on internet explorer. The second IE was launched there was adult-website advertisement all over, my homepage was changed to about:blank with adult content and about 4-5 pop ups opened at once. So I did a deep search in the hard drive and found Trojans, worms and attacking tools for people to use my computer as a weapon against others. See? 3 Hours! Its not safe.
I am sure we can make a good bet that Internet Explorer and FireFox are the two major internet browsing programs on the net (unless you are on a mac, then your are using safari). A lot of people that are fond of the internet now adays use Firefox, as a matter of fact most do. So Do I. Firefox is open source..(unlike Microsoft) this means that people attack it less and the code for the program is available for anyone. Being Open source has allowed Firefox to have amazing tools and themes by developers for users to use. Since its open source, developers have dedicated their time in building extensions/add ons such as, galleries, RSS feeds, tool bars, FTP Clients, Web developing tools, download helpers and etc.. They have also giving developers the capability of making their custom themes for Firefox, it is amazing what some of these guys have done. 
One of my favorite Extensions for Firefox is NoScript and is probably the best tool to use to do safe browsing. What NoScript does is block all javascript, well not all but the suspicious ones. For example, it will block ads, Javascript attacks that will make your browser go ‘nuts’. Recently I visited a website with Internet Explorer that was ridiculously stupid, the second you enter the website pop ups will start coming and will never stop and it will not even let you close Internet Explorer. I visited this website on Firefox and it did the samething except in firefox the script launches Internet Explorer and make the annoying pop ups. That is until I turned on NoScript, with noscript the javascript had no chance. This was not an attack to your computer nor was it a permanent attack to my browser its just something to annoy people.
It is true that a lot of the adult-rated websites have virus/trojan…so my question to you is, why do you visit them? 
. Actually, not all of the sites are like this, if they were doing this then their reputation would go down and they wouldn’t make much money but here is a good guide how to avoid those that have viruses. First of all, as I mentioned before I prefer Firefox over IE any day therefore I would use Firefox because It will give me much more security. Also make sure you have noscript and its running. These kind of websites usually tend to ask you to download something for example they would say “Click Here to download This Celebrities’ nude video” and when you click the file name is called Video.exe or [Anything Here].exe. You see that .exe, well thats not a video, thats a program. You run that you are infected. Do not download anything unless you are fully sure of what it is and of the source of the download.
You have to use your sixth sense when browsing sometimes
Basically, there are a few other Browsing programs but I find and a lot of people find Firefox to be best. Although it has its own problems such as memory leak, firefox would be your best choice no matter what you do online. And Remember avoid downloading .exe files unless they are from well known sources. Happy Browsing!
| 2008 | IE7 | IE6 | IE5 | Fx | Moz | S | O |
| January | 21.2% | 32.0% | 1.5% | 37.2% | 1.3% | 1.9% | 1.4% |
| 2007 | IE7 | IE6 | IE5 | Fx | Moz | S | O |
| December | 21.0% | 33.2% | 1.7% | 36.3% | 1.4% | 1.7% | 1.4% |
| November | 20.8% | 33.6% | 1.6% | 36.3% | 1.2% | 1.8% | 1.6% |
| October | 20.7% | 34.5% | 1.5% | 36.0% | 1.3% | 1.7% | 1.6% |
| September | 20.8% | 34.9% | 1.5% | 35.4% | 1.2% | 1.6% | 1.5% |
| August | 20.5% | 35.7% | 1.5% | 34.9% | 1.3% | 1.5% | 1.7% |
| July | 20.1% | 36.9% | 1.5% | 34.5% | 1.4% | 1.5% | 1.9% |
| June | 19.7% | 37.3% | 1.5% | 34.0% | 1.4% | 1.5% | 1.8% |
| May | 19.2% | 38.1% | 1.6% | 33.7% | 1.3% | 1.5% | 1.7% |
| April | 19.1% | 38.4% | 1.7% | 32.9% | 1.3% | 1.5% | 1.6% |
| March | 18.0% | 38.7% | 2.0% | 31.8% | 1.3% | 1.6% | 1.6% |
| February | 16.4% | 39.8% | 2.5% | 31.2% | 1.4% | 1.7% | 1.5% |
| January | 13.3% | 42.3% | 3.0% | 31.0% | 1.5% | 1.7% | 1.5% |
The graph above is from http://www.w3schools.com and it represents all the internet browsers being used for 2007 and 2008.
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