Filed under: Security, Windows, Freeware, Browsers

I'm not a big Opera fan, but I have to say I'm pretty impressed with Operator - a portable version with built-in Tor (hence the semi-clever name) anonymous browsing.

Download the 7mb zip and extract it to your flash drive, and you've got an excellent way to keep your surfing on public and work computers safe and private. I was surprised with the speed at which pages loaded, having used TorPark to cure my insomnia back in the day. Part of the boost comes from integrating Polipo, a tiny caching web proxy that Operator bundles with the browser.

Our home page loaded in about 22 seconds, a little over twice as long as it took Firefox. Not bad, considering the added security and privacy.

As the author warns on the Operator home page, only HTTP and HTTPS are anonymized by Tor, so avoid Javascripts and Opera's IRC functions to play it safe. For road warriors - and the truly paranoid - Operator is well worth a test drive.

Operator is freeware, Windows only.

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Filed under: Security, Utilities, Windows, Freeware

While I'm sure you're responsible with the programs you run on your computer, what about the other people you work and live with? If you're an administrator or share your computer with anyone else, you might want to check out Trust-No-Exe.

What does it do? It installs as a service and can block any executable process: exe, dll, sys, com, etc. Set up allow and deny folders, start the service, and programs just won't launch anymore. It'll block attempted launches from anything - floppy or USB drives, network shares, wherever. Theoretically, you could even use it as a basic malware defense by adding your temporary internet files to the denied list.

Since it's a service, it's always protecting your PC. Just be sure you lock down access to services.msc and your control panel, since there's no password option to keep users out.

It's an oldie, but a goodie, and definitely a good, simple way to prevent annoying installs and inappropriate use.

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