[Info-vax] Browser Tracking, was: Re: [OT] Real Usenet clients, was: Re: backups and compaction or nocompaction might be better

[Simon Clubley]

On 2013-02-01, Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> wrote:
>
> NoScript and Adblock Plus have relieved most of the pain here.  Indeed 
> when I recently did a wipe and reinstall on someone else's Windows 
> system, for the programs I wanted to install some allegedly legitimate 
> sites made it exceedingly difficult to avoid downloading registry 
> cleaners and the like by mistake; the combination of the above modules 
> made the task *much* easier (there are also quite a few download sites 
> which manage to get to the top of search engine pages, but aren't the 
> original source of the software, and various of these sites want you to 
> download their own crapware; you need to look at the URL to get the 
> genuine source).
>

Sometimes it's the original websites you need to worry about.

Adobe includes various third party toolbars and other things with their
free downloads and the default is to download and install those third
party items. You have to notice the download option and untick it to
stop Adobe from doing that.

> Flash is trickier to get rid of, since it is used for a lot of 
> tutorials, but there is nothing to stop me using a browser in a virtual 
> machine instead.
>

Strangely enough I never seem to come across any flash based tutorials. :-)

Most of the ones I encounter are in traditional HTML/PDF format and the
ones which are not are on YouTube as simple videos so they get the
download and watch offline treatment.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world