Guard your PC! Fight spam and pop-ups with three free apps
Preston Gralla,
Executive Editor,
ZDNet Software Library
Thursday, August 30, 2001
What are the three most annoying things about using the Internet? My completely unscientific personal poll shows spam, pop-up ads, and cookies topping the list.
They're certainly my biggest bugaboos. But they don't bother me anymore. That's because I use three programs from ZDNet Downloads to stop the insanity. And every one of these annoyance-killers is free.
Spam Buster does exactly what it says--halts spam in its tracks. It'll check up to a dozen different inboxes for spam, and will automatically delete the offending mail or let you delete it yourself. Plus, countless other spam-fighting goodies are in this excellent freebie. (Free/Win95-98-NT)
PC Magazine's Cookie Cop lets you take control of the cookies Web sites put on your PC to track your identity and surfing activity. You can decide, on a site-by-site basis, which sites can put on cookies and which can't. By the way, Internet Explorer 6.0, just released, also includes some new built-in cookie protection. (Free/Win95-98-NT)
Pop-Up Killer zaps annoying pop-up windows before you even see them, so you don't have to be assaulted by pop-ups, pop-unders and who knows, maybe pop-in-betweens some day. It'll also limit the total number of browser windows that can be opened at once. (Free/Win95-98-NT)
So don't let the creeps and marketers ruin your enjoyment of the Internet. Download these three tools to put the fun back in the Net.
zdnet.com
I use Pop-up Killer and find it very good. It does close windows I don't want closed, but I can get around that with a little tweeking |
