| |
| Browser add-ons, especially add-on toolbars, are cleverly designed to look like useful,
attractive enhancements for your browser. But add-on toolbars are not the static fixture they seem to be. Quite the opposite. They are, in fact, running programs and processes. And, as such, could be quietly doing udesirable things via the internet according to whatever it is they've been programmed to do. Because of that, some toolbars may slow your system down, or destabilise it, and will almost always have some ulterior motive for wanting to get on your system, even the best known ones. Some toolbars are absolute rogues - installing themselves without the user realising it might happen, and proving a real devil to get rid of once fully entrenched on a user's hard drive. |
|
| These add-on toolbars, known formally as "third-party browser extensions", are,
in fact, only one thing in an ever-growing list of internet goodies meant to make our everyday surfing lives a joy - or not. It all began, of course, with the humble, enduring 'cookie'. It was those early cookies which first showed software writers just how easy it was to use the internet to deposit hidden files on people's computers in order to get information feedback without the users' knowledge or consent. Those initial, and sometimes essential 'good' cookies were, unfortunately, soon followed by bad cookies, and that inevitably led on to all the much worse things which have followed, right up to the present day. The full list of different internet threats, of which rogue toolbars is, as we said, only one, is forever growing - and currently stands at more than 70 separate risks (view the list). If you find you don't have a clue about the things on the list, that will mean you are vulnerable to having your computer, privacy, and finances sucked into deep trouble by the ingenious cyber-criminals, sooner or later. |
|
| Coming back to 3rd-party toolbars, which stand out only for being the most visual of the
many risks today's surfers face, one or two of these attached to your browser or desktop might not seem too much of a problem. In fact, some people, too many people, even grow to like them, never giving a second thought to what the associated program is getting up to behind the scenes. However, if you get swamped by these toolbars, as did the user's XP-machine shown in Fig 1, right, it can become a major headache in terms of loss of screen space, slowing down of the browser, redirection of searches, generation of popup ads, hijacking of the browser's start-up page, and the secret transmitting of private information from the hard disk, keystrokes or display screen to goodness knows whom. |
|
| Well-known brand-name toolbars, like the Google and Yahoo toolbars, which require a deliberate, conscious effort on the part of the user to install them, are, obviously, going to be the least worry. Indeed, the Yahoo toolbar is clearly appreciated by Yahoo's many users and seems to be the most universally prevalent toolbar. But it is quite invasive on your system and heavy on resources, especially if you allow it to be your Home page, and to install all the various other Yahoo buttons and wotsits, all of which Yahoo will surreptitiously endeavour to do. Yahoo's toolbar, as from Feb 2004, acquired a popup-stopper that works well. However, if you need a pop-up stopper that badly, it almost certainly means your computer is infected with spyware. The Yahoo toolbar, and the many other, less-visible Yahoo add-ons are, fortunately, easy to zap, if proving superfluous to your needs. All you have to do is go into Control Panel's 'Add and Remove Programs' section [renamed Programs and Features in Vista] where all the Yahoo gubbings will be visible and can be removed one by one. |
|
| After Yahoo, the Google toolbar has to be the next most common one, and can be one of the
safer toolbars because, during the installation process, it thoughtfully allows you to opt out of its intention to spy on you. But, if you fail to so instruct it, you are opted in by default. The Google toolbar sports a popup-stopper (requires IE 5.5+), which is of a similar, satisfactory capability to Yahoo's. Google's toolbar can easily be removed from IE via Add and Remove Programs (but see tip 3 in the right-hand column if you use Firefox). |
|
| Another major-player which jumped on the browser toolbar bandwagon, years behind everybody else, was Microsoft. Their offering first became available in Feb 2004 for download from http://toolbar.msn.com. It had buttons to Hotmail and MSN Messenger, included a good quality popup-stopper and featured msnsearch.com (later livesearch.com, now live.com). Their toolbar, being by Microsoft, may possibly pose the least risk of conflicts or other adverse side effects on your Windows system and, in live.com, features a very genuine search engine in our experience. |
|
| Notwithstanding the above, only one of the myriad of available add-on browser toolbars has ever stood out to us as being truly useful and, hence, worth the loss of screen space these toolbars take up. And that is the eBay toolbar - and not even that one if you are not an online auction addict. The eBay toolbar is available in world or UK-specific varieties, and every single button looks to be indispensable - not make-weight padding as many buttons often are on other browser toolbars. One problem though - there are many articles on Google citing the eBay toolbar as spyware and adware - which might just be why it lacked the normally obligatory popup-stopper (when we last looked). Shame. |
|
| If, like the XP-user depicted on the right, you are already plagued by too many toolbars
and spybars on your own machine, you will probably have found that you can hide some of them
by clicking Internet Explorer's View button and unticking any that are listed in the drop-down menu that appears. However, the only toolbar in there that is guaranteed to stay hidden when you next reopen IE is its own 'Links' toolbar. The more-parasitic toolbars might not even be listed in the View menu in the first place or, if they are, they may automatically reappear in the browser the next time you open IE or reboot the PC. |
|
| So annoying can the problem be of unwanted toolbars that Internet Explorer, as of version 6, included an option that will permanently stop all such add-on toolbars from displaying in the browser. To activate this useful feature, click Tools (or Alt > Tools in IE7) > Internet Options > Advanced tab > scroll down to 'Enable Third-Party Toolbar Extensions' and untick the box next to it. Disabling third-party toolbars in this way will definitely stop them from taking up valuable screen space in your browser, which is great. But whether or not the setting will stay unticked after reboots, or if it will stop the generation of any popup ads, or spying, for all such toolbars, is less certain. To be sure of that, you would need to fully uninstall the bars' associated software. Some such bars you will find listed in Add-Remove Programs, and you can ditch them from there. Others, if they are associated with a separate main program, may have a disabling option within that program's Preferences. But most of the nastier bars have become downright devious at hiding themselves where you will never find them. In those cases, the solution is to search on the internet for uninstall instructions for specific bars by name, or install the freeware program 'Spybot - Search & Destroy' to see if that can do the work for you. |
|
|
|
| Fig 1 The screenshot below shows how a proliferation of third-party toolbars
and spybars can quickly consume a lot of your screen real-estate. |
|
|
|
|
| * |
Click the blue link above to see a full-width screenshot. If there is a problem with that link, then click here |
 |
|
|
|
|
| |
Tips |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
1 |
ActiveX
Third-party toolbars may look like static elements. But they are actually running software and, as such, can be programmed to do things behind the scenes you might not like them to do. They always masquerade as 'useful' utilities, such as search tools, ad-blockers and popup-managers, in order to tempt the unwary into installing them. When, in fact, the toolbars may be transmitting your surfing habits and other private information back to the originator, and also causing unwanted advertisements to be put on your screen.
These spybars take advantage of a vulnerability in a part of the Windows operating system known as ActiveX. In order to work, they alter code in the registry and the operating system which, ultimately, could have an adverse effect on the speed and stability of your system. The safest way to avoid a situation like the user above and, eventually, a poorly PC, is not to follow search engine links to dubious websites which may be booby-trapped with unsolicited invitations to download software.
You can easily protect yourself from ActiveX components if you so wish. Most major websites will still function satisfactorily with ActiveX disabled (though not with Cookies and JavaScript disabled) - some exceptions are referred to in the final paragraph of this tip 1. Open Internet Explorer > Tools > Internet Options > Security tab > Custom Level button > choose Disable against the half-dozen references to ActiveX near the top of the list. The 'Active Scripting' option, near the bottom of the list, could possibly be left enabled, as that is actually JavaScript (i.e. not to be confused with ActiveX nor Java). If all your regular sites and web applications still perform normally after this, you can leave ActiveX disabled. If not, re-enable the ActiveX components one at a time until you establish which need to be on and which can be off.
Unfortunately, to use some Internet Banking services, or Windows Automatic Updates, will require some if not all elements of ActiveX to be enabled - so stopping the curse of spyware toolbars and more serious infections is not so easy for the majority of Windows' users. The way we get round this ourselves is to use a configurable firewall (like Agnitum's Outpost) as it can be set to normally block ActiveX, Cookies, JavaScript, Popup windows and Java, but allows any of them to be turned on temporarily, from the System Tray, with just a few mouse clicks, depending on which functions we know will be required by a trusted site we are about to visit. For example, before using Google to research anything, we would always turn off all 'Active Content' in Outpost. ActiveX never gets turned on in the firewall except briefly for any whitelisted website which must have it. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
2 |
Toolbar Phishing
Be aware that, as from April 2004, fake Address Bars were the latest add-on toolbar menace for
Internet Explorer users. These were spawned by criminal phishing gangs to cloak the clumsy addresses
of their fake banking sites, thus fooling a person into thinking they are submitting their passwords
and account numbers to a bank's real website. These Address Bars are mainly acquired by
clicking on an innocent looking link in a seemingly authentic yet totally bogus spam e-mail.
Millions of surfers worldwide have fallen for this sophisticated racket.
Update: as of Jan 2005, this particular vulnerability in IE was plugged, though only if you
are fully updated. Despite that, banking scams remain a major threat in everybody's Inboxes
(Sep 2009). |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
3 |
Firefox
Be aware that, as from December 2006, using the Firefox browser has not safeguarded users from
acquiring malicious toolbars. So the danger is no longer confined to Internet Explorer
users. Whilst it is quite hard to remove some of the worst offenders from IE, it is possible,
eventually. However, in the case of Firefox, it is even harder, even for recognised toolbars like
the Google one. So probably best not to let any dodgy toolbars on in the first place. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
