With the XP service pack 2 installed you've probably noticed how many sites you visit and the new information bar informs you that Internet Explorer has blocked a popup window.
At the basic level, IE's new popup blocker stops popup advertisement windows cluttering your screen. However, at a more security conscious level, IE blocks other popup windows which we never knew were there. Up until now, web page writers with malicious intentions have been able to misuse the popup window feature built in to all web browsers to popup windows off screen or to make them so small we couldn't see them. Even though the window was offscreen or just a one-by-one pixel size, it could contain a small piece of malicious code to install various nasties such as spyware or dialer hackers. IE's information bar now tells you about any such attempt to install malicious code and even if you let through a popup window, it will show onscreen with the normal status bar visible at the bottom of the screen.
The other job that IE's information bar carries out is to let you know if a web page is trying to install what's called an ActiveX control. You already have a couple of these installed quite legitimately and two examples are the Flash/Shockwave player and Windows Media player. These players are legitimate because they're authenticated and signed by the publisher of the software (Macromedia and Microsoft respectively) and installed with IE. Check sites such as www.zone.com and www.atcmonitor.com where you'll see them used on web pages.
So if you visit a site and the information bar pops up to inform you that IE has restricted this "file (web page) from showing active content that could access your computer", you'll need to make a decision whether or not to allow the active content. If it's a site you've never visited previously, click on the information bar to see your options and if you're not sure about the site, click on "What's the risk?" to find more information from IE's help pages.
A more important security feature in IE's popup blocker is the situation where you were going to a site to download a new program or a program update. Many sites loaded a page to inform you that the download was beginning and you didn't have to do anything else - that's not the case any longer. You can test the new way things are done by going through the steps to download the Ad-aware program from www.lavasoftusa.com. Once you choose to download the version of Ad-aware that's free for personal use, you're taken to a page at www.download.com. Download.com have set up their site to take into account the way IE now works and you'll be told that you manually have to start the download - previously it started in the background of its own accord.
Internet Explorer's new security might seem troublesome but it's there to save us from ourselves. webDotWiz's rule, "Don't click if you don't know", still applies but now with the information bar telling us what's happening behind the scenes, we can be sure of not getting into as much trouble.
You're probably wondering what all the fuss is about with the need to have a firewall to protect our computers when we're on the Internet.
A somewhat simple picture of how the Internet works is to imagine many millions of little packets of data zooming through all the wires and between signal towers all over the globe. Each of these little packets has an address, namely, the address of the computer they're trying to find. When they find the computer on the Internet that they're destined for, they're all put together to make, for example, the text of an email, the contents of a web page or the audio from an Internet radio station.
The packets that normally end up on your computer know to come back to your computer because when you connected to your Internet Service Provider, you were assigned a particular address. If you have a broadband connection, your address is usually the same each time you turn on your computer. So each packet of data with your address arriving at your computer is usually in response to a program running on your computer. For example, your web browser has sent a request to a site that you're browsing to give you the next page on the site so a whole lot of packets of data are sent back to your computer.
Unfortunately those with malicious intentions can make up packets of data, randomly insert Internet addresses, and send out millions of these packets on the chance that they'll find computers connected to the Internet somewhere around the world that don't have the latest security. Thus we all suffer from the effects of attacks such as that dealt by the Blaster worm last year.
The job of the firewall is to stop any packets like this getting into your computer. The way the Windows firewall does this is to keep a record of what packets of data your computer sends out and then only allow back in packets that are a response to those sent.
What all this means is that you're going to find some of your programs complaining they can't talk across the Internet (surprise, surprise, up to now you didn't even know they were!!). You'll need to visit the program maker's web site or online forums for information on what the program wants to do.
Remember, turning off the Windows firewall is not a solution - in the end you could find yourself with an inoperable computer. Do some reading, starting with pages such as Programs That May Behave Differently and Some Programs Seem to Stop Working (see this week's list of sites).
