How secure is your most-used operating system?

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ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley This is the April Fool’s edition of the newsletter. But don’t worry. I’m not going to try to trick you by saying that Mic
[See the full post at: How secure is your most-used operating system?]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Perq, abbodi86, fisher75, lmacri, windbg, rc primak, DLivesInTexas

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After reading article I took a look at CRXcavator .   I entered names of a couple of extensions that I use in my browser, Vivaldi.

Sad to say, I can’t make any use of the results listed. I don’t know how to interpret them.  I wasn’t able to find instruction at the web site.   Is a high number good or bad? is this or that factor something I need be worried about? What is it indicating?

Presumably this tool presumes a level of technical skill that I don’t possess.

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Can you give me a name?

Take Lastpass

https://crxcavator.io/report/support@lastpass.com?platform=Firefox&new_scan=true

Then click on each category and see what’s written up about each risk item.

https://duo.com/blog/crxcavator

A high number is bad, a low number is good.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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astro46

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“A high number is bad, a low number is good.”   I wondered about that.  Didn’t see anything to explain the numbers on the site.

the blog is a place to start, trying to understand it.

btw: since you asked,  I entered: Adnauseum (no result) , Roboform, cyberghost cookie cleaner and popupoff.

 

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“As of today, Ad Nauseam is no longer officially listed on the Chrome web store due to it being removed back in 2017. ”

“The reason Google removed the Ad Nauseam extension from their store is that they viewed it as malware instead of an actual plugin. To protect users, Google automatically disabled it for thousands of people who had it installed, amplifying users’ discontent.”

https://lunio.ai/blog/ad-fraud/adnauseam-extension-click-fraud/

So that’s the other thing I want people to take away from this exercise — take the time to review what is being said about it. Chrome has banned the plug in.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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I had forgotten that adnauseum was removed from google’s app store years ago.  I downloaded it from the adnauseum site.  seems to work quite well.  Whereas before, using an adblocker, I had to deal with the banners about getting rid of the adblocker,  now, with adnauseum, I don’t see the ads and only the occasional banner.

After some research, I concluded that google’s reason for removing adnauseum had nothing to do with malware, except for being mal re:  google’s purposes.  We know that google is all about invasion of privacy.   I stay away from anything google for day to day activities. (sad to say, I recently learned that reCaptcha is google. and has the ability to trace activities on the sites it is installed on.  “re” is the key designator. “Captcha”  alone isn’t a google tracer.  I haven’t figured out how to get around this bit of sneaky dishonesty, so far)

Lunio’s report about adnauseum was surprisingly honest, for a company whose purpose is to combat ad avoidance.  I guess adnauseum helps their business.

 

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Belarc Advisor (free) will give you a security benchmark score, with info on how to fix each “fail”.

 

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lmacri

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But I don’t see that Belarc discusses Extensions in the browser?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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satrow

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Susan Bradley wrote:

But I don’t see that Belarc discusses Extensions in the browser?

It doesn’t.

I posted that in response to the thread title “How secure is your most-used operating system?”

I’m not a Plus member (we discussed why), so I thought I was “on topic”.

 

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