The Internet pornography industry is often at forefront of new advertising technologies. It was they who first discovered methods to lock 'back' button on browser from allowing users who stumbled (accidentally or otherwise) into 'darker' areas of Internet. Then came Internet-hijacking: changing a browser's home page so that every time Internet is connected user is instantly taken to a certain site. There are ads that lie dormant in system and pop up long after user has moved on from original site or even after they've stopped using internet. These people went everywhere they could, and rest of Internet world soon followed.

So, how can we keep ourselves safe? Unfortunately, answer usually lies in having a number of protection programs running in background at all times which can slow down a computer. This is a lot more positive than having a computer terminally slowed down by malicious side of Internet though, so we just have to take bad with good.

The first port of call should be an anti-virus program. If you're even vaguely concerned about online security you're going to need one installed. A friend of mine decided that this was a foolish suggestion and picked up almost 100 viruses in a single day. These programs range in price and quality, with more expensive (but very good) packages such as Norton's Anti Virus (or their comprehensive Internet Security bundle) or free programs, such as AVG Free Edition, available from http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/

Mozilla Firefox (formerly known as Firebird) is probably largest threat that IE has faced in recent times. Currently, according to http://www.w3schools.com, IE is browser used by 69.9% of Internet users and Firefox is used by 19.1%. This might not seem like much, but according to http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/ an educated guess at number of people that use Internet is somewhere around 605,600,000 users (or was in 2002, number will have increased substantially by now). That means that (after some erroneous math) a rough stab at guessing number of people using Firefox is probably over 115,064,000, which isn't a bad user base at all.

When a friend of mine from university first tried to convince me to switch to Firefox I wasn't particularly interested. Basically, IE has done everything that I've wanted in a web browser. He went on at great lengths about security aspects, in-built popup blockers, download managers and so on, but I'd spent a fairly large amount of time and money on anti-virus programs, firewalls, spyware removers, and my browser was secure enough. I also have a download manager that I'm very happy with and refuse to change from. After much cajoling I finally agreed to try this newfangled software. I'm glad I did too, because now I have no desire to go back.

Firefox is very easy to install and use. There's nothing complicated, you simply download (for free) and run install file and then when you run browser for first time you get presented with option of importing your IE favourites (a nice feature, with click of a button everything is moved across to ease your transition) and also option of making Firefox your default browser. My initial reaction was fairly apathetic; Firefox seemed pretty much same as IE and in essence, it is. It has all basic features of IE, but then I discovered it adds so much more.