Author Topic: New Mozilla Firefox user (Read 23,473 times)

Betsy · « **on:** December 01, 2005, 10:09 PM »

Hi all,
I've just switched over from IE to Firefox 1.5, and I like it. Does anyone here write stuff specifically for Firefox? If not, is there a site you recommend (besides Mozdev)?
I'm hoping to find an app that will cause Firefox to remember the text size for each site I visit. I am getting tired of having to increase the text size of my homepage every time I visit it.
Thanks,

Betsy Markman
http://www.freewebs.com/dying_for_answers/

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** December 01, 2005, 10:42 PM »

thats a very clever idea for a firefox plugin - something that will remember text size (and maybe other settings) on a per-site basis. very clever idea. maybe someone knows a firefox site that would be interested in implementing this?

please keep us updated if you find a solution betsy.

Betsy · « **Reply #2 on:** December 01, 2005, 11:10 PM »

I'm also still going nuts with popups. One reason I quit using IE was because of all the popups. I have Ad-Aware, Ad-Watch, Spybot S&D, Adblock, Noscript, and Flashblock, but I still get lots of popups. Can anyone suggest anything that will really, truly, stop those nasty things?
(I was even desperate enough to check for a rootkit, but there wasn't one.)

Thanks in advance,

vegas · « **Reply #3 on:** December 02, 2005, 06:25 AM »

You aren't the only one that would love an extension that would remember text size per site. I'd just love it to keep my text size period across every site, but per site would be nice too. We should talk more about Firefox extensions here, haven't seen much chatter about that. I think I'll start a thread. Betsy, please let us know if you find such a plugin.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #4 on:** December 02, 2005, 12:27 PM »

Re Popups ...

Have you got the popup blocker enabled? Tools / Options / Content

If that isn't aggressive enough you could download the Yahoo Toolbar for Firefox. That has a popup block that is so agressive I can't open new windows by clicking on a link (even my online banking is blocked!!!).

m_s · « **Reply #5 on:** December 02, 2005, 12:50 PM »

I can't recall a popup window - what do they look like? (= irony) I find that Firefox has completely got rid of them. Let us know whether you actually had the popup blocking activated, Betsy. And there is always Ad Muncher, which does an excellent job of stopping bad and/or unwanted things online (with a discount to DC members here: http://www.donationcoder.com/Specials/index.html)

mouser · « **Reply #6 on:** December 02, 2005, 12:57 PM »

coincidentally, betsy just won a copy of admuncher in the nov drawing, so that might solver her problems also.

Betsy · « **Reply #7 on:** December 02, 2005, 02:50 PM »

Yes, I double-checked, and I have had popup-blocker turned on. I hope that, when I get AdMuncher, it really does fix everything.

Am I going to cause problems by having multiple pop-up/ad/flash blockers running all at once?

Quote from: mouser on December 02, 2005, 12:57 PM

coincidentally, betsy just won a copy of admuncher in the nov drawing, so that might solver her problems also.

m_s · « **Reply #8 on:** December 02, 2005, 03:41 PM »

Betsy, I'm a little worried that you might have more of a problem than you realise - popups are one symptom of various adware and spyware infestations. I think it might be worth your while to download a trial version of SpySweeper or something like that and run a test. I read your list of security apps, but I have had experience of each of these being fallible, so I think it could be worth testing with another reputable scanner.

Betsy · « **Reply #9 on:** December 02, 2005, 04:03 PM »

Thanks for the suggestion. I figured it was something that my apps were missing, but I had tried so many...I didn't know what to try next. I'm downloading the SpySweeper trial from Snapfiles now.
Can anyone tell me if it's ok to keep multiple apps of this sort running at once? Can they interfere with one another?

Quote from: m_s on December 02, 2005, 03:41 PM

Betsy, I'm a little worried that you might have more of a problem than you realise - popups are one symptom of various adware and spyware infestations. I think it might be worth your while to download a trial version of SpySweeper or something like that and run a test. I read your list of security apps, but I have had experience of each of these being fallible, so I think it could be worth testing with another reputable scanner.

m_s · « **Reply #10 on:** December 02, 2005, 04:27 PM »

It is mostly okay, but here's not much point in having them all running all the time. Just make sure you've got some protection in each of the main areas of intrusion protection, antivirus, pestproofing. I would definitely recommend a good firewall and antivirus program as essential, and then would add some realtime protection - MS AntiSpyware is free and pretty good, though it misses some important things. I also use Trojan Hunter (www.trojanhunter.com), though I've recently switched off its realtime protection and just scan periodically. I like very much Online Armor (www.tallemu.com), because it brings together the features of a number of these programs into one package - but I've recently uninstalled it, because it was doing silly things with Gmail and with these forums (I had to press 'Post' four or five times before it would let things through - each time it came back with a 'timed-out' message); the developer tells me he's working on v.2, which will address these issues. CarolHaynes started a thread on using a Hosts file for safer surfing - search for that, and read the article on the site she points to; it's got some good advice.

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** December 02, 2005, 04:34 PM »

i would *not* run multiple *resident scanning* programs at the same time.

it's fine to have multiple programs installed that only scan on demand, but i would disable all but one resident (i.e. running always in the background) spyware/adware scanner, and onlt one resident antivirus, and only one resident firewall scanner.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #12 on:** December 02, 2005, 04:46 PM »

Definitely don't run CounterSpy with Microsoft AntiSpyware - they are known to conflict.

For what it's worth I use resident scanning with SpySweeper and MS AntiSpyware at the same time without any issues.

I also have DiamondCS ProcessGuard running. This stops any programs running without explicit permission. You can set it to allow a program to run automatically, but one of the great things is it stops drivers etc. being installed without you noticing. The other great thing is that once you have said yes to a particular app or service everytime it starts in the future PG checks the file before allowing it to run to make sure it hasn't changed. If it has changed (eg. after an update/upgrade) it warns you and you have to allow it again.

The other program I have chuntering along silently is Ghost Security Suite's RegDefend. This is rule based (and comes with a good set of default rules) and allows you to monitor potentially dangerous registry changes and again give specific apps access to various registry operations.

Betsy · « **Reply #13 on:** December 02, 2005, 05:32 PM »

Well, I just ran Spy Sweeper, and it found 18 things that the Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D missed (I ran those two right before running Spy Sweeper.) I'm glad it found them, but I'm totally bummed because I just wasted $30 getting the full version of Ad Aware. I doubt I have a ghost of a prayer of getting any refunds on that....

Thanks again to the person who recommended Spy Sweeper. You may have saved my sanity, if in fact this eliminates my problem!

I'm gonna go do some surfing and see how it goes.

Quote from: m_s on December 02, 2005, 03:41 PM

Betsy, I'm a little worried that you might have more of a problem than you realise - popups are one symptom of various adware and spyware infestations. I think it might be worth your while to download a trial version of SpySweeper or something like that and run a test. I read your list of security apps, but I have had experience of each of these being fallible, so I think it could be worth testing with another reputable scanner.

mouser · « **Reply #14 on:** December 02, 2005, 05:47 PM »

we've discussed in this forum how careful you have to be to insure that stuff these programs "find" are really the bad things they say they are.

these programs tend to flag stuff that is good and mistake it for something different which is similar -
just be careful what you let it delete until you are SURE it is in fact the bad thing that the program says it is -
sometimes a similar name can confuse it and you end up deleting something important and harmless.

Betsy · « **Reply #15 on:** December 02, 2005, 05:56 PM »

Well, so far so good. I've been surfing, and I haven't had a single popup.

It was easy to tell with some of the adware, just by looking at the names that Spy Sweeper listed. They matched the names of the popups that kept coming up.

Quote from: mouser on December 02, 2005, 05:47 PM

we've discussed in this forum how careful you have to be to insure that stuff these programs "find" are really the bad things they say they are.

these programs tend to flag stuff that is good and mistake it for something different which is similar -
just be careful what you let it delete until you are SURE it is in fact the bad thing that the program says it is -
sometimes a similar name can confuse it and you end up deleting something important and harmless.

m_s · « **Reply #16 on:** December 02, 2005, 09:55 PM »

You're welcome, Betsy - glad my advice helped.

(By the way, the link in your signature doesn't work...)

Betsy · « **Reply #17 on:** December 02, 2005, 09:59 PM »

Hmm..I just clicked on my signature link and it worked. If you wouldn't mind trying it again, please do, and then let me know if it still doesn't work for you?

Thanks!

Quote from: m_s on December 02, 2005, 09:55 PM

You're welcome, Betsy - glad my advice helped.

(By the way, the link in your signature doesn't work...)

m_s · « **Reply #18 on:** December 02, 2005, 11:16 PM »

Yep, Freewebs.com is listed in my Hosts file, so no can visit. This is one drawback of using Host files and multiple security programs - Ghost Security Suite controls my Hosts file, and I can't figure out how to wrest it back so that I can edit it. Anybody have any ideas? I posted a question on this topic over at Wilderssecurity.com a few days back, but nobody has answered yet...

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #19 on:** December 02, 2005, 11:42 PM »

Don't seem to have that problem?? I am running Ghost Security Suite and have no problems editing the HOSTS file.

To be honest I wasn't aware that GSS did anything with the HOSTS file ?

Are you sure your HOSTS file isn't just read-only ?

m_s · « **Reply #20 on:** December 03, 2005, 10:47 AM »

This could be really helpful for me, so I'm glad you've responded, Carol - this has been driving me a little nutty for awhile. Here's my experience: when I run Hostsman, it's always greyed-out, meaning that some other program has control of the Hosts file (I think that's how they put it in the Hostsman manual); so I open Process Explorer and search on 'hosts', and it tells me that three poscesses are connected to 'hosts': gss.exe (twice, for some reason), and hm.exe (which are Ghost and Hostsman, respectively). Now you can't shut down GSS very easily, because it's running at such a low level. I have tried to used Startup Delayer to delay GSS running, so that Hostsman could get priority on the Hosts file, but I expect there's a pretty fundamental flaw in my thinking... But no, the file (at C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC) is not marked as read-only or hidden. Would love to find a solution to this, because I quite often find innocuous sites blocked and want to be able to edit my Hosts when I need to.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #21 on:** December 03, 2005, 11:18 AM »

I did the same - this is what I get:

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #22 on:** December 03, 2005, 11:23 AM »

The strange thing is why is GSS doing anything to HOSTS at all? There is nothing in the configuration that mentions HOSTS - it all seems to be purely registry based (which is what I thought).

Having said that HostsMan works fine for me despite GSS being involved ???

Have you got any other antispyware or antivirus apps that might be locking and managing the HOSTS file ?

m_s · « **Reply #23 on:** December 03, 2005, 11:40 AM »

For realtime protection I have NOD and - wait for it - Outpost Pro 3. I'm just going to have a little poke around in Outpost's settings... Well, I can't find anything obviously giving it control... But then I don't know Outpost very well - does anyone know whether this might be it?

m_s · « **Reply #24 on:** December 03, 2005, 12:42 PM »

I think it might actually be a problem with Hostsman on my machine... I found this quite useful page on a US NOD32 site - http://www.nod32usa.com/nod32-antivirus-faqs/faqs/1125160244.html - and followed the links from there to their recommended Hosts manager (BISS Hosts Manager), and that works fine - allows me to edit and replace the Hosts file... And so I am able to visit Betsy's page.