First off, ABS is a light weight browser plugin for Chrome and Firefox. Installation couldn’t be easier – just klick on the button on our page et voilà, it’s done. You’ll immediately see the small umbrella icon on your top right side of your browser. By clicking on it, a browser overlay that gives you a quick overview concerning the status of the page you’re on – Is it safe? Does it track me and if yes, how many trackers are installed? – will appear. On the same screen you’ll also find a little gearwheel in the upper right corner. Similar to most other programs, once clicked on it will take you to the addon’s settings.
Now let’s find out what ABS can do for you.
Safe Browsing
Yes – not everyone visits questionable pages. But do you honestly thing that you’ll only get hit when being a pirate or watching pornographic videos? Just think back to the whole Kyle & Stand Malvertising affair: Even Amazon and YouTube were affected! And if industry giants like them were displaying malvertising, everyone is a potential victim.
Not with ABS though: Our browser-addon will block malicious URLs, which means you should be safe from exploit kits, malicious search engines (yes, it’s a sad fact that something like that exists, too), and of course phishing URLs.
In other words: It’s the perfect companion for you browser.
Privacy Protection
If one of your main concerns is privacy, this is one feature you should definitely check the extension out for. As soon as Avira Browser Safety is activated, it will inform you about how many trackers a website has. Trackers are normally used by websites and organizations to collect information about your interests and online behavior. Often, the information is used to display adverts specific to you. The collected data about you may also be sold and/or analyzed.
But back to ABS. In case you activated “Show safety indicator” in your settings, you will have a small green bar at the top of your browser window that, once you hover over it with your mouse, will drop down and show you how many trackers are tracking you on the current page. For more details on exactly which ones are used you can always click on the eye icon. There, the tracker information will show you the tracker name and let you decide if you want to block it or not.
By the way: Some browser already have an option that asks trackers to please not track the user. Sadly a lot of them to not respect the polite request. That’s why with ABS we go one step further and just kill them before they are loaded.
PUA be gone!
PUAs, Potentially Unwanted Applications, are pesky. Most of the time they end up on your PC as a bundled component of the initially desired program. Standard installation processes can mislead you into complying with this recurring scenario. With Avira Browser Safety installed, you will get a warning if you enter a page that offers downloads with PUAs inside. You can still download your software from those sites – just be mindful to take extra care when it comes to the installation process. Make sure to only install what you really want and need.
So why not just try out our Avira Browser Safety – after all, it’s free!
