Re: Browsers

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Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 12:54:28 -0800

Thanks for all the input! I'm currently using both Firebird and
Mozilla. I like both a lot. Firebird because I like testing and
playing with new software, and Mozilla because I wanted something more
stable for certain occasions. I'm very glad to hear you speak highly
of Mozilla.

I did try Opera the other day, but I don't like it much. Struck me as
something that AOL would write. Too much junk and frills in it. But
apparently a lot of people like it, so there you go...

It's funny. You would think that Microsoft would try to fix up IE
after all the criticisms and maybe ad tabs and a few other things that
almost all of the current browsers have. But apparently they have no
plans to even release an IE 7.0 at all.

For now I'll stick with the Gecko browsers.

Thanks for all your comments...

On 27 Nov 2003 21:45:46 -0800, yosponge@yahoo.com (sponge) wrote:

>On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 23:27:39 -0800, Kerodo <kerodokenny@hotmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Sponge -- What would you recommend as the most secure browser for
>>Windows...
>
>Good question. It's a toss-up between Mozilla and Opera, Mozilla
>(Netscape), probably has the best track record in terms of serious
>vulnerabilities. Opera, on the other hand, has had a few serious
>vulnerabilities (all fixed now as of version 7.22, and nothing close
>to the vulnerabilities in IE), but has much better privacy and
>security-control features. This and it's raw speed and
>user-friendliness are why I use it 99% of the time.
>
>The only drawback to Opera is that, unless you buy it, it will display
>ads, and it does have a tracking GUID embedded in it that gets
>transmitted to the ad service, Advertising.com, if you click an ad.
>However, this feature is (very) easily controlled; you can either 1.
>block Advertising.com's servers in your firewall (I include all
>Advertising.com servers in my "Spyware Blocklist" and Kerio rulesets
>anyway); 2. you can block it with DNSKong, or 3. if you don't use
>either, you can simply block all the ad services by adding the lines
>to your HOSTS file located at the end of my post. You can easily
>change the GUID too, at least on Opera 6.
>There is one thing to point out: virtually all websites are designed
>to work with only two kinds of browsers. First there's Internet
>Explorer, and second there are Gecko browsers (Netscape, Mozilla,
>Firebird, Thunderbird, K-Meleon, etc.) I have never not been able to
>access a website in Mozilla -- and that's several hundred if not a
>thousand over the years -- except for four that were trying to install
>spyware. (One was an MP3 site, the other three were the homepages of
>spyware and browser-hijacker vendors, which is why they wanted you to
>use Internet Explorer.) The moral of the story is, if you can't access
>a website in Mozilla, it's a website you definitely don't want to be
>visiting anyway.
>I've had several websites, in additon to the four mentioned above,
>that wouldn't work with Opera. In almost all of the cases, the problem
>was cleared up once I set Opera to allow referrer logging. It will
>enabled it by default when you install Opera anyway, but since
>referrer logging raises severe abuse concerns, particularly when
>dealing with spam, I normally have it turned off. (There is also a
>hack that lets you do this on Mozilla too, but it involves shutting
>down the browser, manually editing the prefs.js file, and restarting
>the browser each time you want to enable or disable referrer logging.)
>If you're really, really privacy-conscious, using Opera's Delete
>Private Data... feature when closing out the browser will delete your
>cache, cookies, and other stuff. Personally, I only use this feature
>after accessing my webmail account, since there have been exploits
>that make use of webmail data, but a lot of people really love this
>feature and use it all the time.
>
>HOSTS file to be used with Opera:
>127.0.0.1 opera1-servedby.advertising.com
>127.0.0.1 opera2-servedby.advertising.com
>127.0.0.1 opera3-servedby.advertising.com
>127.0.0.1 opera4-servedby.advertising.com
>127.0.0.1 opera5-servedby.advertising.com
>127.0.0.1 opera6-servedby.advertising.com
>127.0.0.1 opera7-servedby.advertising.com
>127.0.0.1 opera8-servedby.advertising.com
>127.0.0.1 opera9-servedby.advertising.com
>127.0.0.1 opera10-servedby.advertising.com
>127.0.0.1 opera-report.advertising.com
>127.0.0.1 ins1.opera.com
>127.0.0.1 ins2.opera.com
>
>Sponge
>Sponge's Secure Solutions
>www.geocities.com/yosponge
>My new email: yosponge2 att yahoo dott com

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