Here are some very useful add-ons for Mozilla Firefox that will keep you safe from malicious content on the web:

Adblock Plus - will keep annoying advertising out of your site; allows custom removal of ads as well. Enjoy surfing without ads

WOT - Knows as Web of Trust, gives you rating for each site you visit. Ratings are based on WOT users' evaluation of that particular site. Quite simple and effective to get basci onfo about a site.

BetterPrivacy - Website owners and corporations won't stop finding new ways to get more info on how you use the web. A new way of doing so is to use "super cookies" that are not deleted by the browser. These remain in your system and spy on you. This add-on will remove them whenever you close you Firefox.

If you are successfully using any other add-ons for Mozilla Firefox, please share them with us!

MrUnknown

thanks, mr unknown

I strongly oppose this add-on. It may make your browsing a bit more enjoyable on a selfish level... but it hurts the sites you visit. Sure, it's easy to not care about mega-sites run by multi-million dollar corporations where your impact is below negligible, however what about the thousands of small sites you visit everyday that depend on that advertising revenue to keep their site online?

Desktop Nexus is a very expensive site to run because the large wallpaper downloads cause very steep bandwidth bills. Our site is 100% paid for by advertising, and anyone who visits Desktop Nexus using AdBlock Plus costs us money. In my opinion these users are just leeches. Some people might speak up and say "oh, but I added your site to my whitelist to support you", and while that's appreciated, I still feel for the thousands of other sites you visit that are not whitelisted. And if you go around whitelisting every site you enjoy, at what point does that add-on become meaningless and you'd be better off without it at all?

Another fallacious point people bring up is "ads will give me viruses". While I'm sure this is true from time to time, most major ad networks (Google Adsense, Tribal Fusion, etc.) are extremely careful about the advertisements they show, and any malicious ads are quickly removed. The entire basis of a company as large as Google depends on the integrity of their advertisements, so you can be assured they do everything in their power to maintain a trustworthy reputation. Desktop Nexus only serves ads from top-tier networks like these.

I understand how that add-on reached it's monumental popularity, but I do wish people would realize the damage they're doing with it. Adblock Plus is incredibly selfish and hurts the sites that you enjoy.

I support this post

What you say is true IF we click those ads. And for people with limited download quota it dramatically reduces those MBs that we have to spend on downloading these advertising. It blocks pop-ups and does block images/videos/ads with content that is highly disturbing for children. I would give you a site with free MP3s with really disturbing and offensive advertising, and you would be amazed at how effective AdBlock is.

We are trying to help you with the site, Harry. We propose new ideas and suggestions that could increase site's revenue. It is really hurtful when you call people leeches, cost of money and selfish just because they use AdBlock.

MrUnknown

Not all ads require clicking for us to make money. In fact, a lot of the ads on Desktop Nexus make money by simply being shown (CPM). Adblock doesn't allow them to be shown.

As a person that doesn't have very much computer experience, would you be so kind to explain to me how the people who place the ads know the difference if it is shown or not?

I am just curious is all. I am trying to learn how blocking ads hurts your site, nothing more. Thanks

I use ADBLOCK PLUS and WOT.ABP is not so good,but WOT is great,i recommended this add on,is very useful,specially when you want to download some program.

Web of Trust (WOT) is great, but I just dislike Adblock. Sorry to sidetrack your thread.



The ad is not loaded from Desktop Nexus, but rather they are just shown ON Desktop Nexus. When someone loads a page on DN, it sends a request to the advertiser's server for an ad. Their server gets the request, logs it, and sends the ad to be shown to the user. At the end of each day/month, the advertiser (or ad network) count up all the ad requests, and you get paid for those. Firefox add-ons like Adblock Plus scan the page for ads, and block the request that is sent to their server. This way, the ad is never requested, so it's never sent to the user's browser, and never logged on their end to pay. The advertiser never knows that user existed.

Did I explain that very well?