"out of the box", i think Chrome and IE9 are the most secure. only thing i hate about Chrome is the horrible spell checker. it's top notch as far as speed and security are concerned. IE9 using protected mode is also quite secure. and it has a very good spell checking addon: ieSpell. but it feels sluggish compared to Chrome; just open a new tab in IE9 and see for yourself. and it just does not feel as polished as Chrome. if someone can come up with a good spell checker for Chrome i'll be quite satisfied.
I have just switched Opera from Chrome. Chrome causes scroll lagging if i open new tab through some web sites. (Disabling adblock is not help!) Opera is fine.
In terms of security it is objectively worse. There is literally not one thing Opera does better or even at all that ANY other browser doesn't do, and on top of that it's closed source. You're in denial.
I hate Chrome's spellcheck as well. I have no idea how they managed to have such a terrible dictionary.
Oh, I forgot to mention Ghostery as well ... just as long as all of those extensions are not considered too over the top. Yes, I'd be loath to surf the Net without NoScript & WOT at a bare minimum with either Firefox or SeaMonkey. The only time I ever contracted any malware (a trojan) was with SeaMonkey's (Google) translator as I was surfing a Russian newspaper. I didn't use NoScript then (about three years ago) but I reckon that if I had I probably wouldn't have become infected. It was Google that alerted me to the malware & I'm pretty sure it was some form of a buffer overflow exploit & came from an advert (flash). It got through SpywareBlaster, SpyBot & Norton. It was only after running SUPERAntiSpyware that I found & removed the trojan. I've never run SeaMonkey (or Firefox) without at least ABP since, & I've been using NoScript for at least a couple of years since the infection. When I ran K-Meleon regularly I made use of its internal adblocker but I never actually installed NoScript, one of the reasons was that I was put off it by some of the KM forum members who seemed to have a low opinion of both it & Mr Maone. Mind you, these are the same people who told me WOT was for old ladies! It was only when I realised that most of these guys were running KM on Nix systems with WINE (therefore less vulnerable than Windows) that I decided to have a good look at NoScript. You can run Eric Wong's NotScripts on Opera.
Notscripts for Opera hasn't been updated for months though, and it obviously has some issues. With regard to Ghostery, why? You're running NoScript, it is basically doing the same thing. Granted Ghostery is a heck of a lot easier to deal with, since blocking is on auto. But, Ghostery blocks relatively few trackers, and if you're using ABP to block trackers (via the list) and Noscript...nothing is getting through. I actually use NoScript for the speed increase from not loading all that 3rd party BS, not the security.
I wondered about its efficacy on Opera. Good point, I think I just got used to Ghostery & it gives info on trackers. Oh yeah, & there's that! In my experience, Ghostery has never worked too well on Firefox anyway. You're right, I don't really need it.
Well, it certainly works better than in Chrome for now. If you like Ghostery or feel it serves its purpose alongside your other extensions, go for it. It can't hurt anything, I just figure there is a lot of overlap when you're using Noscript and ABP as well. You could probably get along with just the tracking filters in ABP when you come right down to it. The only other thing Noscript is good for is protection from javascript exploits, which honestly don't happen a lot now that social malware has taken over. I've been toying with Linux distros the last couple of days, so hopefully I can leave all that crap behind.
Lol, that my friend is a prime example of a thread going into paranoid mode. I'm including myself in that, I worried just as much. But what are we going to do, shun every otherwise damn good security vendor out there, choose only programs that adhere to those protections (which so far we're finding out very very few do) and worry over a developers tool?
Why not? It's ridiculous that security software vendors are distributing insecure software. Not supporting them in this venture is a fair way to let them know they need to change that.
Fair enough, so get rid of your entire setup, run Windows FW only, use Chrome and EMET. Don't even use Sandboxie, since that is another attack surface, and check all your downloads with an online AV like Virustotal or something Actually, heck, I'd do that if I knew my next trial with Chrome would go well, and VirusTotal didn't have file size limits.
If I were going to do that I'd have to get rid of EMET as well. I'll probably get around to it eventually. At the moment I put "Having fun messing around with security software" over "Actual security" =p
Lol, get rid of EMET and there goes a lot of extra "oomph" to your security..but hey, it's one less attack vector! Isn't Windows security a blast?
MHM. But I wouldn't encourage anyone to actually do that. Telling your software vendors you won't purchase their products because of security holes is a fair way to get them to listen, but you can always use their product and send their support an email requesting it. But this got a bit off topic =p
I only meant it as a response to your, "go for it. It can't hurt anything" comment. Theoretically, (and maybe that is the operative word, huh?), it could hurt something. But to answer your question, no, I am not going to shun every otherwise good security vendor out there... at least that isn't how I process that "attack surface" paranoia. I use it as a reminder, in the back of my mind, that every extension I frivolously add on could be used against me at some point. It is just an added precaution, to try to keep it lean. And I will say, it is the reason why I currently have only 4 Chrome extensions, and not 10 or 12. So I use that warning in moderation, my friend.
I've been wondering if Ghostery is worth using on Fx for a while now anyway, I keep giving it another chance! Good luck with Linux, I may experiment again with it pretty soon when I have the time.
Often it's the other way around... the more you learn about something, the less frightened you are by it. At least that's a hope we can all have. Basically, it can be summed up this way...
