I can suggest Firefox as an alterntaive to IE and it will stop popups and has a download manager.

Yes you should always have the most current IE, for secutiry reasons even if you dont use it.

The free Google Toolbar is good if you continue to use IE--it has a built-in Google search, pop-up stopper, form-fill, and other handy features. As Zachery mentioned, Mozilla and Firefox are good alternatives, though be aware that Firefox is still in beta. The Mozilla-based browsers can be set to reject third-party cookies, the ones that are most likely to be ad-based.

If you are on broadband (DSL or cable), you should have a firewall, as well. The free version of ZoneAlarm is decent.

Thanks to both zachery and tallcool1
I am on Cable and only have a router. Any suggestions on a firewall brand?

Most routers can act as a rudimentary hardware firewall. Some even come with firewall software. Combining a router with ZoneAlarm should be enough--but make sure that your router's firmware is up-to-date. More than one manufacturer has reported vunerabilities that can be patched this way.

You can test your firewall status using ShieldsUp! (GRC.com) which is part of one of the most useful service sites on the Internet--especially when you upgrade to Windows XP. You want all your ports to be "stealth."

If you have spybot, then spywareblaster is a must. You can get it from a link within Spybot when you go to the 'immunise' part. The link is to javacools where you can download spywareblaster. Once installed this needs to be updated also. The good thing is that when you update spybot's definitions, you can also update spywareblasters definitions by clicking on the same link in immunise, except this time, the link doesn't go to javacools, it starts up spywareblaster. Cool.
BTW. Spywareblaster keeps the bugs out, it does not remove them.

Hi everyone great suggestions, but I wanted to point out that sometimes switching to another browser might make some web pages unusable not everyone follows the w3c standards.
My bank's online service won't work on anything but ie 5.5 + . I like Mozilla and Netscape myself. Rumor has it MS is going to add a popup blocker to the next version of IE.

Also I have had fun cleaning up the Blaster worm on plenty of computers running dial-up, worms don't care what speed your Internet connection is just that they can get to the right open port to exploit what flaw its after. I suggest a firewall program as a bare minimum on the computer if you use it to connect to the Internet. I also suggest a firewall program as well as a hardware based firewall like a router if you are a broadband user.
Most consumer routers don't allow outside connections in from the Internet as default. Most commercial routers do not have access rules setup to block connections from the Internet in by default.

Hope that helps in addtion to the other good suggestions.

Steve gibson's personal staements are a joke in the security world.
"Stealthing under many situations can actually give back _more_ information than just having the port closed, especially on server systems. Stealthing is just another farce from the Steve Gibson camp. If you have a system that is listening on port 80 and stealthing everything else, the attacker obviously knows that a system exists there, and using timing attacks a sophistocated attack can even determine the type of firewall you are running as stealthing adds more latency than having the port just not being open. This latency may be calculated be using a carefully constructed request to any open services. Once this is accomplished, the attacker can make a good guess about the firewall based on this data."
SOURCE: http://daniweb.com/techtalkforums/showthread.php?t=2985

And I quote here : "Shortly before the Windows XP launch,security gadfly(look that up) Steve Gibson made a highly sensationalized asserstion that Windows XP's support for a programming interface called raw sockets would lead to widespread network address spoofing and denial of service attacks based on such technique. Of course, this apocalypse never materialized. The guy(Steve) is a joke, in the security world."

SOURCE: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0072...51#reader-link

Also you may get a software to Protect your family from pornography
http://www.NetDogSoft.com
NetDog does very good job in porn blocking world