Joy Unbound

With these recommendations, you will effectively eliminate just about everything that could possibly pose a threat to you on the Internet as far as surfing the web.

1. Browse the Internet with Mozilla Firefox instead. Although there are other browsers like Chrome, Opera, and Safari, Mozilla Firefox’ plugin database is very large and offers a great deal of flexibility.
   1. Last I know, the “other browsers” I mentioned do not support suggestions 2 through 9 because of lacking the same flexibility as Mozilla Firefox. Some people will use Chrome or said-browser because it’s faster, or maybe uses less system resources. Well, in the battle of the browsers, all browsers have their pros and cons. Mozilla Firefox is no better or worse than any other browser as far as speed and resource usage. However, the security of Mozilla Firefox can be greatly improved through the use of plugins.
2. Use Adblock Plus and Elements Hiding Helper for Mozilla Firefox. With this you will have an advertisement-free experience, eliminating potentially malicious advertisements from the picture.
   1. According to Kyle Bennett of [H]ardForum in response to a private message of mine: “EVERY instance of Avast pointing out an in issue with HardOCP has been a false positive. Avast is POS when it comes to solid detection.” HardForum (part of HardOCP) is a gigantic IT bulletin board consisting of hundreds of thousands of registered users, and thousands of simultaneously active members. Something to think about.
   2. The security philosophy here is to cut down on as much unnecessary third-party content as possible, and more importantly to make a webpage as static (or as equivalent to a simple, basic HTML webpage) as possible. Never in the history of the internet has any machine been infected strictly from a webpage alone. It requires something capable of actually making a webpage more functional (a programming language, which HTML/CSS are not), like JavaScript, Flash, Java, Silverlight, VBscript. While iframes may be used, they themselves (being a part of HTML) cannot infect or harm anyone; they can be used to open up a webpage on a malicious site that runs malicious JavaScript and such, but if things like JavaScript are blocked by default such webpages are perfectly harmless until you allow the scripts within them to run.
3. Use Flashblock for Mozilla Firefox. With this all Flash-based applets in a webpage will not be loaded, but instead be replaced with a “play button” placeholder. Webpages could contain hidden Flash applets, some which are probably unnecessary for you to load, and some that could be malicious even. By using Flashblock, you have the selective choice to load the desired applets within a webpage.
4. Use QuickJava for Mozilla Firefox. This plugin will allow you to have the convenient ability of toggling different elements of a webpage, such as JavaScript, Java, Flash, Silverlight, Images, and even the styling of a webpage. This can be useful in turning off certain things by brute force; ie. if you never encounter and use Java or Silverlight, you could disable those, thus preventing potential. And if you know a webpage contains a Java or Silverlight applet you need to use, you could quickly toggle them and refresh the page.
5. Use HTTPS Everywhere for Mozilla Firefox. This plugin will automatically rewrite the URLs in Mozilla Firefox for many websites to direct to HTTPS addresses of said websites, making sure that your web activity is as secure as possible from packet sniffers looking for plaintext passwords or other sensitive information you receive and send.
6. Use BlackSheep for Mozilla Firefox. This plugin requires the installation of Winpcap. If you are not browsing a website securely via HTTPS, it is possible for someone to hijack your logged-in session to any website (like Facebook). This means that unless you are logging in and surfing through HTTPS and/or an encrypted, trusted network, someone could essentially log in as you without being required to know your password. BlackSheep will monitor the internet traffic on the network you are connected to monitor for duplicated internet traffic; it does this very easily by transmitting fake login data, which an observer might pickup and attempt to use (in which BlackSheep can know that someone is looking for sessions to hijack), and then notifies you, the user, about the threat.
   1. This plugin might cause performance issues, although it might have just been me or something else when I had last used this plugin some month or two ago. You may need to experiment with this being on and off to see if it generates any noticeable performance issues.
   2. I personally do not use this Add-on.
7. Use Force-TLS for Mozilla Firefox. This plugin may be slightly advanced for amateur users. While essentially the same as HTTPS Everywhere, this plugin makes it very easy to manage a list of websites that you want this plugin to enforce HTTPS browsing (whereas with HTTPS Everywhere you have to learn the basics of its scripting language and get into the technical areas of browsing and webpages). For the websites that you know HTTPS Everywhere does not enforce secure HTTPS connectivity, you can add those websites to this plugin (Force-TLS) to attain the same function.
8. Use NoScript for Mozilla Firefox. This plugin is probably not for amateur users, as it requires related IT knowledge. It blocks every kind of client-side executable script within a webpage, including JavaScript. Why is this useful? Because every attack through a website or webpage occurs either through Java, Flash, or client-side languages like JavaScript. If you only whitelist the client-side scripts of websites that you know and trust are not malicious, all the other scripts that are useless, unnecessary, and possibly malicious are effectively disabled.
   1. If you still want to use this Add-on despite not qualifying in IT knowledge, the best rule of thumb to go by would be to permanently whitelist websites you visit all the time (like Google and Yahoo) and only temporarily whitelist websites that you visit infrequently or never or have potential for malicious content due to the nature of the website.
9. Use Anonymizer Nevercookie for Mozilla Firefox. This plugin is for advanced users. It combats identity tracing via cookie tracking.
   1. I personally do not use this Add-on.
10. Make sure you disable Extensions and especially Plugins that you do not use and need. You should probably disable all Plugins except for Shockwave Flash (and Java if you come across Java applets frequently or on a daily basis).
11. Use OpenDNS on your computer and/or network. OpenDNS is a free service for redundant DNS resolution service, offering built-in security, better responsiveness when browsing the Internet, and less waiting time for pages to load (on faster, lower-latency connections, it won’t be as noticeable as it may be on, for example, dialup). No registration or sign-up is required, although you could register an account (also free) for increased flexibility and control over how OpenDNS functions for you.
    1. Additionally, OpenDNS is probably the best parental solution that exists. If you register an account, you can chose what types of websites to blocklist. You can blacklist and whitelist specific websites (that have higher priority over blocked categories), and even customize the “Blocked website” webpage.
    2. OpenDNS protects against DNS related attacks, including botnets and viruses on the same line. Just recently, OpenDNS notified me of botnet activity being detected from my IP, so I went ahead and spent at least 48 hours thoroughly cleaning every machine on my network in a quarantined, virtualized environment. Turns out a couple machines were infected with the infamous Conficker virus (which is a botnet and DNS related virus) — OpenDNS serves in protection here by disallowing this virus to do its thing via botnet communication.

Additionally, you can look into sandboxing (shareware). If you have the hardware and resources, you could even go as far as setting up a virtual environment (freeware) (shareware) to completely isolate your computer from activities that could be potentially harmful to your system. However, like NoScript, this tip is probably not for amateur users, as it requires related IT knowledge.