One PROBLEM - AD SPAM and PRIVACY CHIPPING:
SPAM is getting something you didn't ask for,
abusing your time and money.
THE SOLUTION:
You CAN
intelligently filter Google.
You can use
them for your search engine, but you will not be bombarded by
their ads or stripped of your online privacy by the
Storm Troopers of Mountain View.
OPTOMIZE GOOGLE - just do it!
ANOTHER PROBLEM:
There are thousands of web sites that exist only to decrease your
privacy through surreptitious collection of where you browse or what you
browse for. Worse, some of this web-page trickery is strikingly
akin to phishing - they KNOW you would not like to give them the
information they are collecting...
SO THEY TRY TO TRICK YOU.
There are further thousands that fill your screen
with undesired ads, popups, or other dribble.
You can just delete them from your life and immediately enjoy more time and more
privacy.
You can use the Adblock extension (highly
recommended)
in Firefox to individually filter them
Better yet, you can take down hundreds at once (and dramatically speed your browsing
experience in the process) by cleverly stealing their addresses in your own computer. Your computer will not talk to theirs ever!
Turnabout is more than just fair play:
It is
obligatory for anyone not wanting to be a web-dupe.
ANOTHER SOLUTION:
You can protect your system (for all users at once) super easily by
replacing a single file - called the hosts file.It is
plain text and I encourage you to read it to understand what it does.
Then you can improve it as you see fit.
Here is a clean and safe hosts file.
It replaces all
the useless 'doubleclick', 'google-analytics', sites with a link to yourself.
What goes nowhere, stays nowhere.
Read and compare your HOSTS file with mine (or others) and
be astounded!
If you replace your own
hosts file (found at C:/Windows/System32/Drivers/Etc/hosts)
with this one you will instantly enjoy more privacy and a faster browsing
experience!
There are others on the web, if you don't like the one I stole, just search.