Thanks to Utilizer for the ping!!
Posted on 11/27/2015 7:10:49 PM PST by Utilizer
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So what are the most common types of malware?
They fall into two main categories: those that are basically no more than a nuisance, and those that are aimed at getting money from the victim.
Perhaps the most common example of nuisance malware is adware. According to Oh, this is typically delivered along with free software or by compromised or malicious web sites. Adware rarely does any real damage, but some examples are hard to remove.
The term was once applied to 'advertising supported software.' In return for getting a useful application at no charge, you accept that it will display ads from time to time -- an approach you still see in the free versions of some mobile apps. If you don't want the ads, you buy the paid versions instead - and depending on how much you pay for mobile data, the paid version can work out cheaper than the free one. Seems fair enough, right?
But these days adware has taken on a darker meaning, and more often refers to malware that delivers unwanted ads, changes browser settings to use a different search engine, and so on. The people behind this type of malware benefit by being paid for the traffic their code (re)directs to particular sites.
(Excerpt) Read more at bit.com.au ...
I'm getting truly sick of the ones that OVERLAY a part of whatever I want to read, and won't go away even when you acknowledge and dismiss them.
I certainly recognize that the content pages have to be paid for, fine, I'll acknowledge their ad, but then it should GO THE HELL AWAY.
And this isn't just on Windows -- the same thing happens on my Linux box, and occasionally on my Mac, and eventually I have to just give up because the damned ad won't let me read the content -- so I stop going to that site.
And they lose me entirely as a visitor. A fat lot of good their "ad" did for them.
You’d better never update, then. Seriesly.
Thanks to Utilizer for the ping!!
It’s really sad that you don’t know how to turn off scripting, or are too lazy to try.
So if you remove Java what would that mean as far as what it’s used for?
What is scripting and how do you turn it off...and if you do what do you loose?
Not everyone is aware of what can, should or beneficial to do to eliminate “stuff”......I use ad block and ghostery but some even get by these.
LOL. Not sad or lazy at all. There's a third option. I use my machines only fractionally for pleasure and entertainment -- mostly I do work on them, both at work and at home, and disabling scripting gets in the way of the work I do. It gets really tiresome to be turning it off and on and off and on so I just leave it enabled because I have to get the work done, whereas the pleasure browsing is the less important function.
I suppose if I were going to dedicate a machine to browsing for entertainment purposes only, I'd disable scripting and leave it that way, but other than FReeping I actually don't do much non-work on the computers.
I never click on pop-ups, since I don't know how they were designed. I don't know if clicking top right X in the popup will close the popup or will launch some new unwanted process.
Most popups go away if the page is reloaded. That's all I ever do to get rid of a popup. If a popup reloads when the page reloads, I just forget about reading that page.
I have Flash set on Ask to Activate, I have Java disabled in browsers, I use an ad blocker, and for some sites I use YesScript to block Javascript.
It keeps the annoyances down to an acceptable level.
YesScript disables Javascript in websites that you specify in a blacklist.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/yesscript/
The author of YesScript says:
YesScript lets you make a blacklist of sites that aren't allowed to run JavaScript. Use YesScript on sites that annoy you or hog your system resources. One click to the icon in the status bar turns scripts on or off for the current site.I thinks that's a good evaluation. I found NoScript to be unusable and YesScript to usually be helpful. Some sites won't load with Javascript blocked, but most will.Unlike NoScript, YesScript does absolutely nothing to improve your security. I believe that Firefox is secure enough by default and that blocking all scripts by default is paranoia. YesScript strives to remove hassles from your browsing experience, rather than add them.
Please give me the positive side of malware?
I’ve seen plenty of them on all kinds of sites. When I call them kinetic, that is overstating it. The motion is often subtle, which is what is really irritating.
Yes. I do it on a site I know is not the kind of site that is malicious because they don't want to drive you off, but I am with you 100% on that on sites I am unfamiliar with.
It’s bad.
It just seemed like too much work. It was always blocking stuff I didn't want blocked. However, it has been a long time since I used it, and maybe I should give it another shot.
Since NoScript remembers your settings, it gets easier very fast.
NoScript; Ghostery.
Absolutely. Whether harmless or not, I didn’t ask for it to be installed so out it goes.
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