There are a number of helpful Firefox extensions that you can use while browsing other websites to prevent or recover from bad things happening. Here’s a few with brief explanation:

noscript - will block javascript and java by default. You must specifically authorize sites as you visit them (one time only authorization, or always authorize — NOTE: for new/unknown sites I’d use the “temporary authorize” .. you can always permanently authorize later). It can automatically approve any of your bookmarked sites. Get this extension and use it. Can also show you what sites are using a lot of javascript.

jsview - Think of this as view source for external javascript files. Handy if you want to inspect foreign javascript code (perhaps alerted by the extension above) you can use this extension without having to separately download and open the JS file.

siteadvisor - this will proactively measure sites by color in your FF status bar: green = good, red = bad, yellow = be careful, gray = unknown (also, be careful)

show ip - while this doesn’t offer you any sort of protection, it does display the IP in the statusbar of all sites you are visiting, which could be handy if/when you do find a questionable site.

Session Saver - in case something causes Firefox to freeze, this extension could be a lifesaver: returning your session, including tabs and whatever you were typing on the next load.

Greasemonkey - this extension allows changes on websites. For some things like removing background autoload audio, this can be helpful. You can find thousands of Greasemonkey scripts including contributing your own at userscripts.org.

Have a related protection-oriented extension to share? Feel free to add to this list below.

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