Another technical tip

[theweaselking]

Adsdaq, an internet spam "advertising" company, have been serving trojan horses, worms, virii, and exploits all day long. And they're a big company, and a lot of sites (coughkeenspotcough) mistakenly considered spammers trustworthy and served their ads, including today's, which contained 0-day exploits for Adobe Reader's web plugins and Internet Explorer.

So:
If you're still using Adobe Reader, you shouldn't be. Foxit is smaller, faster, and equally functional. And Adobe are assholes. Switch.

If you're still using IE, you shouldn't be. Firefox is smaller, faster, more customisable, and more secure. And while MS are not nearly as assholish as Adobe or Apple, they're a massive target and IE has fundamental architectural flaws that *cannot* be fixed without a complete from-the-ground-up no-backwards-compatibility rewrite.

If you're using any browser other than Firefox, you are seeing web spam and running scripts. You are a victim, you are perpetuating the problem by rewarding spammers, and you are vulnerable.

If you're using Firefox but not using Adblock Plus, a list subscription, and NoScript, you're doing it wrong and leaving yourself wide open for malware vendors and web spammers.

Firefox. Adblock Plus + Easylist. NoScript. It is the only safe, spamless way to surf.

Comments

[elffin.livejournal.com]

Lynx + massive HOSTS file posseeeeee Reprasent.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming you actually want a working web browser.

[skington.livejournal.com]

No way. Email (http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/) is the way to go.

[maskedretriever.livejournal.com]

I did not know about Foxit.

I can now actually view PDF files without them hurking, jerking, and not really working.

It is amazing, and I know it's your job to make computers actually work but I still must sing your praises. Bless you, oh king of the weasels.

[corkdorkdan.livejournal.com]

Opera, son.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Does opera make all scripts optional, defaulting to off?

Does opera display ads if the site has them?

[elffin.livejournal.com]

Opera runs, by default, in IE-compatibility mode, which (when and where possible) does the same stupid things that IE does, including yielding to this shitty and entirely avoidable 0-day.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

Gee, I found out about this whole Keenspot thing from a guy who uses Opera, and got infected through Opera.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

I usually use Opera. Occasionally, for various reasons, I use Firefox for a few days at a time (and I often use Lynx for quick searches and lookups). The last few days I've been using Firefox. And it keeps proudly telling me that it has just blocked a popup window, while opening a dozen or so advertising windows (usually Netflix) for me to close by hand.

Methinks I picked the wrong week to not use Opera!

Yay Opera.

[nomadmwe.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I didn't know about Foxit. This will change when I get home tonight.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

I don't use Acrobat Reader, I use full Acrobat. Will Foxit offer the same functionality?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Not without paying for Foxit Editor.

Foxit Reader is the free version, read-only. It is equivalent to Acrobat Reader. Foxit Editor is the PDF editor, equivalent to Acrobat.

(but it's cheaper!)

You could avoid this browser problem by simply uninstalling Acrobat's *plugins* from your browser.

[matgb]

Foxit won't, know. I have Acrobat. But my default reader is Foxit.

Full fledge Acrobat is both a massive resource hog and slow to load up, thus I don't want it in the background and I don't want it to load up when I get linked to a pdf that PDF download didn't recognise as such (I try to avoid sites that do these things, but not all UKgov sites follow guidelines properly).

Acrobat is fine, but how often do you open a PDF you want to start editing directly from the web when following a link?

If it's all or most of the time, and you keep it running, stick to Acrobat. But if you want to just read whatever joke of the week some arse has put online in a PDF, then Foxit is good.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I presume acroread is safe?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Isn't that Acrobat Reader?

[publius1.livejournal.com]

NoScript? Does that disable Javascript entirely?

That would ruin my company's Intranet.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yes, it does - java, javascript, flash... basically, anything processed client-side.

And then you re-enable individual sites by host or domain, as you see fit.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Ahahahaha holy war! HOLY WAAAAAAR!

(Thanks for the Foxit tip.)

[elffin.livejournal.com]

And I am Naoj of Cra.

[jerril]

I've always subscribed to the idea that PDF plugins are a retarded way to hang up your entire browser process (learned back when Adobe was the only option and dial up was the tool of the day) and I don't let either program put plugins in my browser.

[vagabond27.livejournal.com]

Just to let you know, Foxit is fantastic, but does have a few known issues where it doesn't display PDFs correctly sometimes leaving out characters or even entire words.
It makes it unfortunately unusable in a professional environment :(

[jerril]

And yet sometimes it's the only gottdamn thing that will let me get text out of a PDF, text that I need for my job and I need to be able to say "No, this was not typed by hand, it was copied verbatim", and yet the brain damaged client sends to us in a totally fubar PDF anyways I hate him so much.

*cough*

Long story short, Adobe Acrobat is not exactly perfect, and I hate my clients some times so very very hard.

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

Got a url for that zero-day Adobe problem?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Apparently it's the IE problem, just getting it through the Acrobat plugin.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

Oh, thank you for this.

I'm a luddite.

[autobotsrollout.livejournal.com]

Opinions on Chrome now that it is post-beta?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Doesn't have Adblock or Element Hiding, doesn't have Tab Mix Plus, doesn't have Noscript or BugMeNot. It's missing some crucial browser functions, so I haven't used it. The principle is nice, at least.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Or you could get a Mac.

(this comment brought to you by the obligation all mac owners feel to try to get enough people to own a mac that we won't feel so lonely any more)

[pvck.livejournal.com]

So, ah, not precisely in line with your point, and at the risk of starting a holy war... I am someone who uses adobe's video and graphics stuff a lot, but who doesn't care about pdf. Tell me why Adobe are assholes?