"Filthy, nasty spywareses...
trying to ruin the Precious.
We won't lets that happen, no.
We'll shows them good!"
All of you, computer savvy or not, should use the Proxomitron. It will work out of the box and protect against such things as popups and homepage hijackers. Run the install program, put a shortcut to it in your startup folder, and then set it as an http proxy on port 8080. To do this for IE go to tools, internet options, connections. Then click settings if you have a dialup connection or click lan settings if you have cable. Either way, the rest is the same. Check the box that says use a proxy server and then click advanced. Under proxy address by HTTP, type in "localhost". Under port, type in 8080. OK your way out and surf free of popups, ads, and other obnoxious stuff.
You will have an icon in your system tray. If you want to bypass the program and see the page as it would appear normally, right click the icon and select bypass all filters and refresh the page.
Another thing. If you maintain the browser proxy settings as mentioned above and the Proxomitron is not running, you will not be able to connect to the internet. You will either have to reverse the proxy settings in the browser settings or start the Proxomitron.
Finally, this program is a stand-alone meaning it adds nothing to the registry or do such things as install dll's in the windows directory. This means if you don't like it all you have to do is not use it and if you want to uninstall it, just delete its program folder.
It's available here:
http://www.proxomitron.info/files/index.shtml
I would suggest getting the first one listed named ProxN45j.exe because that one is the latest version and provides one-click install.
I have given you all the instructions you will need to use the program succesfully. You won't even need to look ar the help file but of course that is the first place to look along with the readme file for more info. The program is amazing and can do alot more than what I have mentioned. But that requires some extra study.
By the way, it's totally free. Sadly, this wll be the last release. The developer will no longer be working on it. However, unless the web drastically changes, it will work fine for years to come.
"Filthy, nasty spywareses...
trying to ruin the Precious.
We won't lets that happen, no.
We'll shows them good!"
Interesting, thanks.