Better behaviour, better security

[VaguelyRapt]

We all know that there's no such thing as a foolproof security suite. Whenever dealing with computers or programming, it should be assumed that there is no absolute positive, there's only making your odds as strong as possible. Of course, in order to actively fight for your security is something most people don't want to do, because it requires actually knowing what you're fighting, how to fight it, and taking time to do it.

Nonetheless, I believe the best anti-evilware suites are none other than your own internet behaviour, and that's up to you - not any magic software that will protect you in the background. I thought of starting a thread on sharing your internet behaviour to give people ideas on how to better protect themselves through their behaviour.

How I protect myself without anti-evilware
Prevention is the best protection, so of course I have a firewall. I use Firefox, because there are addons for everything!

I don't visit dangerous sites. Haha, that's easy to say - but how do you know which site is dangerous until it infects you? A Firefox extension called Web Of Trust lets you know exactly that. Based on ratings from the whole community, you can see how much people trust a certain site. It shows me the ratings for every site right in the toolbar, for search engine results next to the links, and will warn me before entering a questionable site according to my settings.

I turn off Javascript. The dangers of exploiting browser scripting are well known. The thing is, you don't want to turn off Javascript, how will you do everything on the internet? Firefox has an extension called NoScript. It easily blocks all scripts on a page, apart from those from sources you trust. For example, from the top-level domain only, and not risk having dangerous ads from other sources sneak up on you on a website you trust. A related extension, is AdBlock Plus. It doesn't stop all scripting, but it does remove ads from your browsing, which is a partial, and less time-consuming solution.

How do you protect yourself without relying on the magic security software?

 

[JMH]

As well as the "magic" paid for software I use to protect my laptop, the best protection of all is ME [the hand that clicks the mouse] via my determination & will power not to click on "bait" of any kind as I surf the WWW.
I also check the http router firewall log daily to see if there have been any intrusions or attempts to intrude.
When not online the computer network jack is out. [If I felt paranoid I could turn off the router.]
To date it has worked well. Since I started online around 1997 I have not suffered a virus or malware of any kind. [Long may it remain so.]