Reply #3: Suggestion ...

[RoyGBiv]

One handy little tool for browsing around is the NoScript extension for Firefox. Like Canetoad, I've found a large number of genealogy sites with scams and various javascript applets that do bad things. I wouldn't have imagined genealogy sites being the source of so much of this, but I thought about it and realized that pretty much every older member of my family plays with genealogy and goes to these places. As a group, they (meaning my family members) know very little about computers, much less safe browsing habits. They are prone to clicking "OK" whenever they are presented with a dialog box and as a result have constant problems of this sort.

The bottom line is that no malware or virus protection software is going keep you safe. One has to adopt certain habits. Preventing javascript from running except on those sites you elect to allow it to run is one good habit to learn. Of course even this isn't foolproof. So many sites require javascript that one is prone to turning it on to try to get the content they are after, and you generally have no way of knowing just on a glance if it is safe to do so. But, with experience, you can lower your odds, e.g. you'll learn by using NoScript that some sites have a dozen or more different sources of javascript embedded on their pages and that allowing the main domain is usually safe while keeping those other domains turned off prevents a lot of the weirdness out. The most you tend to lose by not allowing all javascript all the time is advertisements and video streams, but, again, you can allow that selectively, temporarily.