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Re: HSBC's Shangi'ing savings scam

I think you're being a bit harsh on Java (and ActiveX). These allow sites to

> implement dynamic functionality that could otherwise not be implemented or > could only be implemented much less efficently.

I agree that they can sometimes be useful, and the wimbledon scorecard is quite neat. Likewise cookies can be useful too. However, I would still say that about 98% of the time they are junk! (and for Flash that's conservative, I don't think I've ever seen a use which was worth having.) Try putting the cookie setting to "prompt" some time and see just how many you get ... Even with javascript, look at how slowly a site like

formatting link
loads pages, it used to be much faster before they added all the fancy stuff. I can even remember a time when revisting a page was almost instant because it just reloaded it from the local cache, now nearly everything insists on reloading from the source so they can count the hits on the ads ...

I have the "internet zone" settings with most of these things turned off, the "trusted zone" set to the default for the internet zone, and on the rare occasions when I find a site which needs such things I put them in the trusted zone; I think I've got maybe 20-30 sites there. I also have the google toolbar installed, mainly because it has a popup blocker.

Reply to
Stephen Burke
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Use tucows to investigate spyware removers -

Daytona

Reply to
Daytona

The obvious question being, how do you know that the spyware remover is not itself adding something?!

Reply to
Stephen Burke

In message , Stephen Burke writes

Precisely. I used Lavasoft's Adaware for two years, always keeping it up-to-date. In all that time, it found 'owt but a few tracker cookies. In the end I dumped it and bunged a line in my autoexec.bat to delete the c:\windows\cookies sub-directory each time I booted up. Windows always re-creates it when needed. This was additionally useful because eBay's flaky software often took exception to finding its own cookies when I tried logging on. A port activity log revealed that the various favours of Real Player could be a bit iffy unless all it's Big Brother phone-home options were turned off in 'preferences'.

Reply to
james

You don't. Since he's got ZoneAlarm any unusual attempts to communicate over the internet can be blocked. Putting any software on any computer is a matter of trust.

Daytona

Reply to
Daytona

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