How to Increase Security
Recommended For Both Beginner and Advanced Users
Open the "Internet Options" and go to the Advanced tab. Then scroll down to the security section and select the option to "Enable SmartScreen Filter". This will check all sites, and downloads, against lists of known dangerous sites and files. Although this has certain privacy concerns I believe that the additional security it provides outweighs the privacy risks. That said, the choice is yours as to whether you want to enable it or not, but I would strongly recommend it.
Also, you can install a program which will block unwanted ads. For IE I would recommend installing a program called AdFender. It can be found on this page. After installing it right-click on the icon it created in the task bar and select "Open Main Console". Then go to the Filters section. Here I would advise selecting the option for EasyPrivacy in addition to EasyList, which should already be selected. The select OK to save your changes and close the console. This will now work in the background automatically removing unwanted ads.
Recommended Only For More Advanced Users
To disable flash globally go to tools, then safety, and click on "ActiveX filtering". After doing this flash, and all other ActiveX type content, will be blocked until you click the icon to enable it. This icon can be found on the address bar. You can then choose whether to turn ActiveX off or leave it on. This is a relatively good way to protect yourself from many threats, although I would prefer individual site whitelisting.
Use these add-ons
Recommended For Both Beginner and Advanced Users
- Web of Trust (WOT): With this installed if you happen upon a potentially dangerous site WOT covers the screen with a warning and waits for you to decide whether to stay or leave. If you combine this with your own good sense then you will be protected from many online dangers. Also, if you choose, you can ignore the WOT warning and go to the site anyway. Please note that for sites which are largely concerned with political or religious content the ratings may be less accurate. This is because community driven services such as WOT can become tainted by individual's own biases. However, in terms of malicious sites, phishing sites, scam sites, and similar content, I find this service to be very reliable and I would not go online without it.
How To Increase Privacy
Internet Explorer provides users with the option to start the browser in InPrivate Browsing mode. What this means is that if you are running in this mode most privacy traces will be cleared as soon as the browser is closed. This is not nearly enough to adequately protect your privacy, but it is a good start. I would also advise that you change your default search engine to one which is discussed in section 2.
How to change configuration of Internet Explorer for improved privacy
Recommended For Both Beginner and Advanced Users
Open the "Internet Options". Under the Privacy tab most users can select the option to "Never allow websites to request your physical location". If needed you can manually add exclusions for particular sites, but this is almost never necessary. Also, most users will want to change the privacy settings to "Medium High".
Recommended Only For More Advanced Users
Open the "Internet Options". Under the General tab advanced users may want to select the option to "Delete browsing history on exit". This means that nearly all information will be lost each time you close your browser, but if you're willing to make the sacrifice it will help improve your privacy.
Under the privacy tab advanced users can click on the option for Advanced. Then select the option to "Override automatic cookie handling". Then uncheck the option to "Always allow session cookies". I would then advise that you select the option to Prompt for "First-part Cookies" and Block for "Third-party Cookies". Then select OK. When going to a site you will be prompted whether you want to accept the cookies or not. When making a decision I would suggest you select the option to "Apply my decision to all cookies from this website". However, this can be very annoying and you essentially have to do this for every site. Another alternative is to select Block for "First-party cookies" as well. However, this can be somewhat annoying since many sites will not work properly without cookies enabled. You then need to go back into the settings to manually add a site to the whitelist. Managing the cookies in such a way does greatly increase your level of privacy, but that comes at a great price in terms of usability.
Advanced users may want to go to the Advanced tab and disable the option to "Enable DOM Storage". This is located under the Security section. For an explanation of what that is please see this site.
Use these add-ons
Recommended For Both Beginner and Advanced Users
-
LastPass:
This is a secure password manager with automatic password and form
filling. It not only helps protect your passwords, and sensitive data,
but also allows you to confidently create strong passwords and change
them often. This is very important at times like this where passwords
are constantly being stolen from numerous sites.
- Do Not Track Me: This will help to stop third-parties, ad agencies, and search engines from tracking the webpages you visit. More information is given in this review.
- Ghostery: After installing this, and enabling it, left-click on the Ghostery icon and go to options. If you do not want it to visually alert you each time it blocks potential privacy problems you can deselect the option to have it "Show Alert Bubble". This is not needed for our purposes. Under the Blocking tab select the option to "Enable web bug blocking" and then select the option to select all. Then select OK to save your settings. This add-on provides protection very similar to that of Do Not Track Plus, but I have seen no problems running both of them alongside each other.
How to Modify Internet Explorer To Achieve Improved Security And Privacy