Best Free Browser Protection Utility

There's a scumware plague at the moment. All it takes is a visit to one malware site or a "loaded" shareware install, and next minute your Internet Browser homepage has been changed, your default search setting altered, unwanted ads pop up on your screen, rogue software are nagging you to pay, your passwords have been stolen, and worse.

Traditional antivirus software and antispyware software are being overwhelmed by the rapidly increasing amount of virus, spyware and other malware. That's why a different approach to combating these threats is necessary. Instead of technologies that are reacting to malware, we need proactive technology to protect our computers. These browser protection utilities can greatly increase your defenses against drive-by downloads and vulnerabilities.

I took a look at several applications that are vital in the fight against unwelcome and harmful intruders.

My first recommendation for safe browsing is a free program called Sandboxie, for Windows 2000 and later. It creates a special contained "sandbox" environment on your PC, as this animation shows. While browsing within the virtual sandbox provided by Sandboxie, you are totally isolated from the vital portions of your PC, namely your operating system environment on your hard drive and memory locations for your current OS session. So any files you download are isolated to the sandbox. Similarly, any programs that are executed only do so within the sandbox, and have no access to your normal files, the Windows operating system or any other part of your PC.

Usage is remarkably simple. To start a sandboxed browsing session, you just click the "Sandboxed Web Browser" icon on your desktop (or the Sandboxie icon from the Quick Launch tray) and this will launch your default browser in the sandbox. You can then use it in the normal way to browse to sites or download files. By default, files that are saved in the Desktop, My Documents or Favorites will have a prompt to ask you whether you want to save the file permanently. I suggest you add your default downloads folder to the Quick Recovery settings so files saved there will be automatically saved to your real hard disk, saving you the trouble of manually recovering files.
 
After you have finished browsing, you can right click the Sandboxie icon and delete all sandboxed files and processes, and your PC will be returned to the same state it was in before the browsing session. You can change configuration settings to automatically delete all the sandboxed contents when you close a sandbox. You can also configure a third-party program, such as Eraser or SDelete, to erase the sandboxed contents for greater privacy.

The advantage is clear: any virus, trojan, worm, spyware or adware threats that "infected" your PC while browsing will be eliminated.

Sandboxie allows for in-depth configuration which increases security. For example, you can set it to block access to your personal files, or only allow certain programs to run or connect to the internet in a sandbox. A recent feature of Sandboxie also allows you to run sandboxed programs in a Limited User Account, similar to DropMyRights, for even greater security. This should also prevent most keyloggers from running.

However, there are some downsides to this approach. Firstly, if you want to update your browser addons/widgets, you'll need to open an un-sandboxed browser and do it from there. This also applies to bookmarks but you can configure Sandboxie to automatically retain those. Secondly, Sandboxie is not designed to detect or disable keyloggers. You can get around this (mostly) by always empty your sandbox before you log in to important sites (such as sites involving financial transactions). Thirdly, some people find the nag screen inconvenient, which appears for five seconds before a sandboxed application opens.

Sandboxie works fine with all browsers and most software applications, including e-mail clients (though this requires special configuration), instant messaging clients, Bittorrent clients and games. However, it won't work with system software (software which installs a system driver).

If you would like to take your system protection even further, look no further than Returnil System Safe Free. With Returnil you get a cloned version of your system partition to boot from and work in.  If anything does happen to go wrong during your session, it's as easy as rebooting your system, and your whole operating system environment is back to where it was before you turned Returnil protection on. Returnil also includes some useful features, including file protection and an anti-executable function.

Returnil provides a different type of protection compared to Sandboxie or GesWall. It is an excellent solution for those who have limited uses of their computer, for example for users who just browse the web. Also, if you have a separate partition for your data then Returnil is particularly useful because you don't have to worry about losing data which you just saved. Returnil can also be used in conjunction with Sandboxie or GesWall.

Like all security software, you should have a backup of your hard drive and all your files before you install one of these applications.

Please help us by rating this review

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Tests

• Remove Malware: GesWall 1, GesWall 2
• Remove Malware: Sandboxie Part 1, 2, 3

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This category is maintained by volunteer editor JonathanT. Registered site visitors can contact JonathanT by clicking here.

sandbox, browser security, browser protection