Maybe you’ve noticed that when you’re visiting a website, it can run all kinds of hidden programs or scripts in the background. These scripts are harmless in general, like playing a video or loading a button. But sometimes, they can be dangerous and used to attack your PC, track what you’re doing or steal information.
NoScript for Firefox is an extension designed to block all scripts and nothing extra will run, unless you say it’s okay.
It treats all websites as suspicious from the start
Take note that the idea behind the extension is to simply block everything, so, when you launch a website, nothing extra runs unless you whitelist that site. The main focus is JavaScrips, but the add-on can also block, Flash, Java applets and even some types of web fonts and media plugins.
Not everything is blocked blindly and you have different levels of trust to assign to sites you visit regularly. For example, you can assign your bank’s website as totally trusted and allow everything to run as normal. For other websites, you can assign the somewhat trusted badge, while others that may be acting strange, you can have everything blocked or set to not trusted at all.
It’s worth mentioning that the extension can protect against XSS attacks, cross-site scripting that can steal passwords, hijack accounts or finding information without you clicking anything special. Perhaps, that’s one of the reasons why it comes bundled with Tor Browser.
Using it gets and feels better in time
Honestly, using the add-on may feel annoying at first because you’ll notice that some websites don’t work properly anymore. But over time, as you create your list of trusted sites, you won’t feel NoScript for Firefox presence as pressing while browsing. It’s a great tool for those who want to have more control over privacy or simply want to know what their browsers are doing behind the scenes.