PDA

View Full Version : Would NoScript protect me?


maybesomethingdunno
18th May 2012, 05:03 AM
I have installed NoScript in my Firefox. My understanding is that it only allows scripts to run from websites you trust.

If someone sent me a link to a website that turned out to be rather, um, unsavory ("Oh my God! Is this pornographic porn of the pornographic kind?! CLOSE THE WINDOW! CLEAR THE INTERNET CACHE! CLEAR THE INTERNET CACHE!!!"), would my computer be safe from any harmful things that such a website might try to give me?

I know some websites try to install malware/viruses on your computer. Would NoScript stop them from doing that?

I typically surf the internet in a limited Windows XP user account, so that offers some amount of protection. I use Microsoft Essentials as my anti-virus software, but I still worry about these things. Surfing the internet can be like driving a car: one wrong turn and you can suddenly find yourself in a bad section of town.

whiterider
18th May 2012, 01:45 PM
NoScript would stop some such threats, but not all - it just depends on how the nasty is coded. Many of them, for a while, weren't scripts at all but direct links to executable files - NoScript would be useless against those.
The best protection is a good anti-virus program: try Avast! (http://www.avast.com/index) or AVG Free (http://free.avg.com/nl-en/homepage). There are other programs, some free and some not, reviewed and compared here (http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/test-reports/novdec-2011/) - the maximum score in each category is six. MSE does quite badly on protection, which is what I would put the most focus on; you can make up for poor repair using other programs, but you can't make up for the program not detecting bad stuff in the first place.

maybesomethingdunno
9th Jun 2012, 07:59 PM
I meant to respond to this thread earlier. Sorry.

I've have since installed Avast. Thank you. :)