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 Outpost Firewall Pro 2.1 - part II
by Andrew Cooper
Safe web surfing
After Outpost was installed and ready to go, the first thing I wanted to see was the Active Content Filtering plug-in, which, according to Agnitum, provides solid and reliable Web surfing protection.
All the types of Active Content that the plug-in controls is impressive; scripts, ActiveX, Flash, popups, etc. It even blocks animated GIF images! I never heard them classed as Active Content before, but I guess that's a good a place to include them as any. I really dislike animated GIF's, so blocking them on a web page I'm trying to read is a useful feature for me.
Something else I thought was good is the separate settings for web pages and for email and news messages. Many email clients, like Outlook Express, allow Active Content to be mailed and displayed, which often results in viruses and worms damaging your system. I personally like stricter security on my email than on my browser.
The plug-in has an exclusions list for sites you trust, because disabling Active Content elements often results in improper site behavior or appearance. These would include a corporate web site or one you built yourself. Simply add it to the exclusions list and voila - it now has its own independent settings, so the site displays, as it should.
The only criticism I could make is the default plug-in settings permit all Active Content elements and there's no way to quickly tune the plug-in to a particular security level. It would be nice to have a switch that could be set to, say, Low, Normal or High security levels. The way it works now takes some time to fine tune each setting, which would be difficult for a novice user. The interface is largely intuitive, however.
After I configured the plug-in, I visited a number of web sites and played with their pages and the plug-in settings. The flexibility and power of this plug-in is remarkable. I could control every element of the page and could see each hidden activity performed by that Active Content.
Outpost also provides stealth mode support to make your computer invisible to others on the Internet. It also features a sophisticated packet-filtering algorithm that prevents remote DoS attacks against your system.
This new version of Outpost provides an excellent level of Web surfing security. I could see that nothing happened without my authorization or control. This software gave me a definite feeling of safety and comfort while surfing the web, and that things were flexible and under my control.
Banner treatment
Banners are graphic images that display advertisements. They are so numerous on some sites that they overrun the web pages. I find even one per page annoying and I know people who installed special software just because they didn't want to see any more banner ads.
Outpost's advertisement blocking plug-in, tracks and removes all these annoying advertisements. Version 2.1 provides two levels of ad blocking:
- Keyword based
- Image size based.
Together these two levels let you filter out almost every banner from web pages. The default settings include comprehensive sets of keywords and image sizes encompassing all the usual banner ads and even the atypical ones.
When it came time for me to specify how to replace banners, I was given two choices: a text string or transparent image (which comes with the warning, "not all the banners may be replaced with transparent images"). I chose the second setting thinking that not seeing a banner at all would be better than some text placed here or there on the page. Not every banner disappeared, but I couldn't spot what the plug-in depends on and why it failed to replace those particular banners.
I noticed that the banners that disappeared still had their links and I accidentally clicked one. I think it would be better if Outpost removed the links too, because a page with hidden banner ads is like a field of land mines - you don't know what will happen if you click on one.
One thing I like about the Banner Ad plug-in is the Trusted Sites list, to which you can add those sites with graphics you don't want blocked. This is practical when you're viewing an online store, a site with lots of images that for some reason are blocked or even a site with ads you'd like to view. You don't need to reconfigure the entire plug-in; you just add the site to the list with a few mouse clicks.
Continue to Part III
Back to Part I
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