Fear and Loathing in
Cyberspace
Paranoia is generally frowned upon socially, being
considered suitable only for misfits, loners and Unabombers. Any web surfer in
his or her right mind needs to keep one thing in mind when they fire up their
Web browser, it pays to be paranoid very paranoid. The following sentence, in
fact, should be your cyber-motto: "The world is out to get me."
Repeat as needed.
These days, it seems that I find myself in more
conversations than ever with people who are suffering from some sort of
computer malady. Whether it's a virus, popup ads, or unlimited amounts of junk
e-mail, it's getting to the point where people would almost rather take out a
pen and paper than open up their computer's word processors using the
computer nowadays is nearly more trouble than it's worth.
Note that I am not even talking about malicious
attacks by anti-social hackers, whether against you personally or society in
general. Just using the Internet to surf to your favorite Web sites even
"legitimate" Web sites - could be responsible for that sudden
"slowness" you noticed, that virus your anti-virus program discovered
even your credit card number ending up in the hands of a cyber-thief! Understand?
Even surfing to regular, plain-vanilla Web sites could be responsible for any
and all of these plagues and many others, besides!
There is, for example, an element called a referrer
that operates on almost every Web page in existence. And what is a referrer?
"The referrer normally tells a website the URL of the last page you
visited. This may be something you prefer them not to know - especially if you
are visiting the page by clicking a link in from your email or a private
message board. Much sensitive information can be leaked this way." The
"sensitive information" hinted at here could be private information,
such as passwords or important numbers that could be visible on less than
secure shopping site you clicked onto a malevolent Web page from, which will
trace your referrer link back to its origin and grab whatever piece of
interesting looking information it can find. (of course the shopping site bills
itself as 'secure,' but who knows?). Yes, it sounds paranoid, but unless you
know exactly who is running server A and how good the security is on server B,
it pays to be paranoid!
We have illustrated in previous discussions the
dangers of clicking on the wrong link, especially a popup ad with an embedded
virus masquerading as a jpeg. Popup boxes are at the very least annoying, with
the ads getting in the way of the windows you are trying to work with and
slowing things down even more and could actually be malevolent, in the worst
case. Popups who needs 'em?
Eyeballs still count, and the more ads Web
advertisers can get you to look at, the more money they make. And we certainly
don't begrudge them their paychecks but we must take exception if the only
way they can get us to look at their ads is by bullying our computers, forcing
them to load ads and thereby slowing our connection. For example, your browser
has the ability to reload Web pages saved in a cache on your computer, in order
to save you time. And if the page is not dynamic and contains the same content
as when you first surfed to it, why not used the cached version if you want?
But Web sites have a little trick to make you reload cached pages so you will
have to look at fresh Web ads. "Anti-cache meta tags can slow down your
browsing as pages are forced to re-loaded more often (yet another trick
commonly used to force new ads on you)." Ditto for Dynamic HTML "Often
DHTML is used to do nothing more than push fresh ads and other annoyances in
your direction." These techniques won't steal your data or give you a
virus but why should you have to put up with ads if you don't feel like it?
And so on. Your computer is your computer and yet you
turn into a hapless victim every time you open up an Internet connection. No
computer is born with a virus; neither do they spontaneously generate
themselves into creation. You get them from somewhere, and that somewhere is
the Internet.
Fortunately, there was once another paranoid person
who noticed all this, and got tired of it, just like us. But unlike us, he was
a gifted programmer, and he developed one of the most all encompassing,
thorough and effective applications ever written to guarantee Internet peace of
mind. That application the Proxomitron was considered by security experts to have
been perhaps the most important Internet protection program ever.
Proxomitron is a software application that comes
loaded with various filters that, when applied, will eliminate the threats
mentioned above plus many others. The program applies its filters to Web pages
before your browser loads them a sort of scrubdown to make them fit to appear
on your hopefully clean computer. The version of the Web page you see is the
same as the original, minus the malicious elements that are such a hassle.
You may have
noticed in the above description that I liberally used the past tense to
describe Proxomitron. The author of the program stopped developing it several
yeas ago it because of a lack of time to continue with it and about a year
later, he passed away.
But the dream of Web surfing without intimidation
lives on in the form of Proximodo (http://proximodo.sourceforge.net), which
bill itself as the spiritual heir of the Proxomitron idea (and was the source
of the quotes I listed above). Proximodo has dozens of built in filters that
control and regulate every aspect of your on-line experience much of it behind
the scenes, where the real damage is usually done. The Filter Out Password
Requests filter "Will stop web page password requests from being sent to
your browser."
There are several options to kill pop-ups, covering
different types, including sophisticated Javascript popups. In fact, you can
get rid of Javascript altogether with just a click. And Proximodo has settings
to deter all the problems mentioned above, as well. You can bypass any of the
controls on specific pages if they are not loading correctly, Proxomido can
hndle old Proxitrron setting and scripts, if you have any. And of course, you
can keep popups from popping up and at this Proximodo does an excellent and effective
job far more effective than other anti-ad programs, including the built in ones
by Google and Windows XP. Proximodo even lets you be a bit adventurous the
"sounds to links" setting lets you download midi songs playing in the
background on some Web pages. And the Webpage Comment Viewer will let you see
what the Web site author put into the usually invisible HTML comment field on a
Web page where s/he sometimes write what s/he REALLY thinks of the Web
page/sevice/annoyance s/he has constructed.
While it can't make breakfast and sort the mail (next
vesion?), Proxomido will significantly
eliminate a good 90% of what ails your PC in terms of Internet traffic. And of
course, Proximodo is free, as was Proxomitron. If you dont understand
everything in the help file which will give you a real education on just how
sleazy the Web can really be, from a security point of view don't worry. Proximodo
is kind of like your old-world foreign born family doctor; you dont want to
annoy him too much because he seems like the type that dislikes annoyances, and
you can't understand half the words he uses but while all the neighbors' kids
are home with the flu, yours have yet to miss a day of school!
Download Proximodo from http://proximodo.sourceforge.net.
For Windows 8 or better systems.
.