Please - software gurus - explain to me what's going on here. I don't want doubleclick to operate on my computer. It's adware/malware and it is invasive.
I wouldn't call it "adware/malware" but it is a advertising tracking program like Google Annalitics. Both are very common on websites and set cookies on your system to track you from site to site.. I have nothing against a little advertising to support a site, but when they start tracking where you go and what you do that is a downright invasion of privacy.
The solution is to install FireFox 3.51 is the current version. Do not use IE and IE 8 is worse than any Virus I've ever had.. I installed it and got rid of it a week later.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/ Then install some add ons/extensions for Firefox. At a minimum I recommend the following.
By far the best FireFox addon.
AdBlock Plus
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865Is a corporative of users that rate sites and it will tell you if a site is dangerous or unrated. You can join and rate sites also.
WOT Web of Trust
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3456 NoScript is great, but you need to understand what is doing and when it is ok to run scripts and which ones should be blocked. It's more of an advanced user program, my co workers seem to have issues with it and turn it off, but I can't live with out it..
NoScript
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722These two are new and I've only been using them for the last month, no firm good, but ok so far.
You might want this one; "BetterPrivacy is a Super Cookie Safeguard which protects from usually not detectable LSO's. It blocks longterm tracking on Google, YouTube Ebay and many other ..." Apparently they are using Flash to track us as well.. "Flash-cookies (Local Shared Objects, LSO) are pieces of information placed on your computer by a Flash plugin"
BetterPrivacy
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623I just found this one, seems ok but may make you log in to all your sites every time you visit..
"Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO)" "Sets permanent opt-out cookies to stop behavioral advertising by 84 different advertising networks, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, all members of the Network Advertising Initiative, and many other companies"
TACO
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11073The above are the best security ones IMHO.
There are lots of addons and themes to extend FireFox, I like TabMixPlus but it seems to have issues every time FireFox is upgraded..
Download Status Bar is nice.
XMarks is great if you want to share Book Marks between say your desk top and laptop.
Colorful Tabs is nice.
NoSquint is nice if your getting middle aged and have trouble reading sites with ridiculously small text.. A hint to you webmasters, if the text on your site is smaller than 14 PX it is too damn small. Unless you really don't want it to be read.
PDF download is nice it gives you a choice to download or open, cancel a link that would normally open a PDF file.
I use several others but they aren't really of interest to normal users.