I use Sandboxie, thereby creating a virtual hard drive environment. Returnil does the same, but I find Sandboxie infinitely more user friendly and demands almost no effort or attention.
With a virtual environment, all the threats, old and new are contained within the sandbox and are killed off on browser closure. Nothing gets past this barrier onto the PC to infect it. OK, there are various theoretical arguments about virtual weaknesses, but nothing is perfect and such arguments amount to wasting time on diminishing returns.
But a virtual environment is a one way street, it only stops threats from infecting a PC, it does not stop any data from being stolen from within the sandbox and transmitted to some malicious external source.
So, I have to rely on my FW and AV, plus SpywareBlaster to protect me against such outward bound theft. I do use KeyScrambler as a minor safety measure, but beyond that combination, it is in the lap of the God`s.
I do not have any financial or serious data on my computer, but others do have a whole package of personal and financial data on theirs to make use of their computers as is theoretically intended.
Quite a few of us on here (including me) are Sandboxie users.
Now THAT is music to my ears. On other Forums, when I mention Sandboxie and virtual systems, I get a handful of supporters, some eagerly pouring salt on the subject, then literally no interest. Like talking to a brick wall unless you enter the Sandboxie camp, where knowledge, intelligence and enthusiasm are in abundance.
I ALWAYs double check'em, guess I forgot that one.
Also, bit off topic, but isn't it safer for the forum generally for me put those links in code tags?
Never knew for sure why some folks do that, but it seems safer.
The : before rendered it unclickable
The code is a good idea if you don't want the link followed or grabbed by search-bots. But makes it so it can't be clicked, so especially within forum (linking to another piriform topic) it's best not to do it