I'm more than happy to give Joanna the benefit of the doubt, and a copious amount of rope :-)
Remember what @Martin_fr said? No personal attacks or digs :-) I like hanging around in this forum with so many people I continue to learn from every single day. The last thing I need is to get banned. ( Not happening:-)
But with the best will in the World: she's inclined to head off in unjustified (and misplaced) anti-establishment rants, it's almost as though she panics when presented with certain fnords. After something that transpired a day or so ago I also find myself wondering whether she really appreciates the difference between IRC and a forum (aka discussion group etc.), and the fact that in the latter case she really /does/ have to go back and read a thread in its entirety.
Patience is an acquired skill, so is tolerance. We have no idea what she may have gone through Mark? For someone to go off like that there has to be a reason which we are not privy to.
Given she drives me up the wall sometimes but maybe she feels scared, or fear of the unknown, or could be so many things. Given sometimes I feel this is a lost cause but that does not stop guys like you and me from helping.
I just do what we all do in situations like this I do not react or engage in that direction I simply wait for the anger and outburst to die down and when we have calmer weather initiate a dialog again, hopefully. All am saying is the Joanna I chat with on IRC and here in the forum could be two very different people. She was warm and welcoming to me this morning ( and I was getting ready to wear my body armor titanium carbon steel, but found there was no need) She believe it or not actually went and made me burst out with laughter.
People have different natural levels of patience. Give her time I guess, once she sees that what we tell her can make her browsing a heck of a lot safer well you never know:-) Once she becomes comfortable with you she is a very normal person. The same cannot be said for you or me coz you went and spoofed NSCA with multics of all os's and I have a streak of certifiable lunacy in me. Why else would I still be trying to comprehend/figure out what the heck is an Object in Lazarus
Please note that I specifically didn't say "even Joanna" earlier. But I'm seriously trying to make the point that if she- or for that matter anybody else- is worried about browser security then using Firefox with multiple profiles is a very good starting point, since even if one instance sets up (e.g.) a tunnel that persists longer than it should others should still be isolated. There are obviously problems when a browser starts writing outside its profile storage area, and I think I'd include ~/Downloads in that... I definitely would if a browser's configuration could be tweaked so that out-of-profile scripts could be run.
Things like spoofing the browser's UA string are only likely to help if scripting is disabled, since my recollection is that one of the things that can be mined from the DOM is an array identifying the installed extensions and plugins and in any event Google et al. can probably work out what's running by fingerprinting exactly what facilities are in the DOM. But basically anything that distracts less skilled attackers...
MarkMLl
Agreed and good advice. If only we can get people to listen then implement. ( Yes you may kick me when we someday meet. You know this is very off-topic and irrelevant to this topic but I saw yur profile says 'Sussex, UK' ? In 77 to 79 I was in Twickenham, Middlesex. Those were the days. I was what 17 I think :-)