How to secure your browser

Firefox and other Mozilla browsers have an add on available called NoScript (install from https://addons.mozilla.org/), that blocks and notifies you of scripts like Flash, Quicktime, JavaScript etc, preventing malicious websites from using these scripts as attack vectors to access your computer or crash your browser. Blocking all scripts however would render your browsing experience incomplete, thus NoScript allows you to adjust settings so as to block only unsafe domains. For Chrome you can install a very similar extension, called by a very similar name NotScript (search in Chrome Store). This too gives you a relatively high degree of control over what content to run and what to block on your bowser while allowing you to whitelist sites you trust and want easy access to. Internet Explorer again has certain inbuilt features you can tweak to give similar results. Go to Internet Options > Security Tab > Custom Level > Disable Scripting. But there is no customization possible and the JavaScript will be disabled for all websites alike.

Other useful and popular options include Ghostery (http://www.ghostery.com/) for both Firefox and Chrome that gives you a pop-up whenever you use an ad network or tracking script and allows to block the ones you don’t trust. Then there is Close ‘n’ Forget in Firefox, through which you can protect yourself from sites you’ve accidentally opened, only to realize later that you did not want it to appear in your history at all, you can simply press the icon and the site and all cookies related to it are permanently deleted. If the thought that all you visit or search on the net gives you the creeps, you should try out BetterPrivacy in Firefox, which blocks long term tracking by Google, YouTube, Ebay etc.