[Rick Masters]

I've been using this app. It's fantastic for securing privacy and speeding up my browsing.

http://www.ghostery.com

Start by downloading Ghostery for your browser. Click on the blue ghost on your menu bar. Click on the gear at upper right. Choose options. On "Blocking Options" select all. Now when you load a page, the trackers are blocked and the page comes up instantly without advertising! I love it. Many more options are available. One great feature is customization and the ability ut un-block Flash for video on a case by case basis with two clicks.

I browse a lot of dangerous countries in my research, using bulletproof Linux and sometimes more vulnerable Windows. I use Vipre on my Windows machine. It's the only anti-virus software I pay for. You can clean your computer by using the free trial at

http://www.vipreantivirus.com/free-antivirus-trial/

A great spyware app is Spybot. I run it periodically on my Windows machine. You can enable "immunization" for greater protection.

http://filehippo.com/download_spybot_search_destroy/

To keep my Windows machine running fast, I use the dynamite Piriform tool CC Cleaner.

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

[DukeB]

Good stuff, have used crap-cleaner for years on my windows laptops.

On a Chromebook at present and but few glitches. Any programs for it?

[Rick Masters]

This extension will permanently eliminate any problem.

[Bill Cummings]

This extension will permanently eliminate any problem.

Rick what does this mean?

One great feature is customization and the ability ut un-block Flash for video on a case by case basis with two clicks.

[Rick Masters]

Ghostery works a bit differently with each browser type, but if you have problems viewing videos, you can click on the Ghostery icon then click "Whitelist the site" to view without interference from Ghostery. You can also dig deeper into "Options" to find the specific problem. An example that demonstrates Ghostery's effectiveness is http://www.drudgereport.com
View it with and without Ghostery. The load speed with Ghostery on is stunning. Videos and ads you don't want to see vanish. Irritating page refresh stops. Bandwidth usage also goes way down. It's like you kicked a monkey out of your computer.

Note that some animated .gif sequences will continue to play. They are downloaded images, not streaming videos, and Ghostery ignores them. Both Flash and Java went through a scandal last year in their slow responses to fixing vulnerabilities so it's hard for me to trust them. I also disable these in my browsers and require a query (in "Settings") to enable them only when I want to watch something or run JAVA. With Ghostery enabled and set to block all trackers - advertising, analytics, beacons, privacy and widgets - puzzle piece icons appear on US Hawks where the videos had been. Whitelisting the site brings the all the videos back, or you can right click and enable individual videos.

"Anti-virus" is part of the UNIX/Linux OS so you don't have to buy or add anything. Linux with Firefox with Ghostery is heavy armour compared with anything you can do with Windows. Windows is always risky because hackers universally hate Microsoft and make a hobby of cracking it's security.

also see:
How to Harden Your Browser Against Malware and Privacy Concerns
https://www.google.com/search?client=ub ... 8&oe=utf-8