Scary, huh? One solution is to only go to old, familiar, safe web sites.
Unfortunately, thanks to the Dot Com bust, porn peddlers have bought the
domain names of many sits that went out of business. This trick even defeats
web babysitter programs. Porn sites also buy domain names that are
misspellings of or similar to popular domains. Or, they trick search engines
into listing them under a phony category.
Porn sites are notorious for downloading malicious programs onto your
computer. Some of them don’t care whether you actually look at their filth.
They are tricking their advertisers into paying them for page views. That’s
why they open up a dozen or so porn pages every time you launch your browser.
The gullible advertiser thinks you have been spending hours looking at their
ads.
A porn site will leave pictures in your temporary Internet files, its URLs
(Universal Resource Locators, which are web site addresses) in your browser
records, and in some cases may leave its URLs in the Windows Registry. In the
case of something like "Child Paysite," this is serious. Possession of child
pornography is a US Federal felony. It’s also illegal in many other nations.
Fortunately, courts have held that child porn files in Temporary Internet
Files are not a crime. Investigators realize that people can bring up a child
porn site by accident.
How do you fight browser attacks? Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) is the
least safe browser on the planet. The first thing you need to do is make sure
your IE is the latest version. You can check on the version by clicking Help
--> About. Then go to the Windows Update site,
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ to see if there is a later version.
Next, turn off all scripting functions (ActiveX, Java and even Javascript)
or at least set it up to prompt you before running anything funny.
To do this, click Tools --> Internet Options --> Security --> Custom Level.
This brings up a screen like that in Figure 9.
Figure 9: Making IE safer.
To be safe, on every topic pick either "high safety" or "disable". This
will prevent your computer from running some programs it would have otherwise
downloaded from some web sites. For example, many web sites run automatic news
feeds powered by Java or Javascript. The search functions in some web sites
are run by ActiveX, Java or Javascript. If you have disabled them they won’t
load.
Some web sites, for example
http://www.netscape.com/, will alert you when you are missing content on
account of ultra high security. Other web sites will just leave a gap where
the program would have run.
There’s still more to securing IE. Under Internet Options, click on the
Advanced tab. For ultimate security, turn off anything having to do with Java.
If disabling these features ruins too much of the browsing experience, you
can always back off to less stringent security settings.
Alternatively, you can run two different browsers, one set on high security
and the other on low. When visiting a site with lots of active content that
you absolutely trust, use the low security browser.
However, even a familiar web site can turn dangerous. This happened Sept.
18, 2001 when the Nimda worm (officially named W32.nimda@MM) struck. Web sites
infected by Nimda could in turn infect the computers of people who visited
them. Nimda infected the marketing site for fast-food chain Carl's Jr.,
consumer-electronics maker Sonicblue, and some 150,000 other web sites.
Once inside the visiting computer, Nimda scanned web browsing records and
Outlook and Outlook Express for email addresses, and mass mailed copies of
itself to them. Outlook and Outlook Express users who merely opened or
previewed these messages also got infected.
As with Outlook, hackers often target IE because it is the most common
browser. So another solution is to use a different browser. Netscape has a far
better track record, and is easier to make safe. You can download it for free
from http://browsers.netscape.com/.
To secure Netscape, click Edit --> Preferences --> Advanced. Disable Java
and Javascript. You don’t need to disable ActiveX because Netscape doesn’t run
it.
Other free browsers include:
