Lynx as a safety browser

Hi folks,

We’ll start the discussion by introducing the Lynx browser. It’s what is call a text only browser. That means nothing active of any kind other than the text of the page. I call it a safety browser because nothing can infect you as long as there is nothing but text downloaded, and not ever executing that. The beauty of this browser is that because it does not support JavaScript, Adobe Flash, or other similar active content, nefarious websites will have an exponentially harder time downloading and installing malware.

Lynx is a platform independent text browser, meaning it basically runs on any operating system:
– Lynx is available in source code and for Unix flavors, MacOS, Windows 32, and DOS386+
– Several Linux distributions already carry it, just install the lynx package using apt, yum or whatever is appropriate for your distribution.
– The package website is https://lynx.invisible-island.net/release/

One caveat of using this browser is that many dynamic sites will break. The other is that even with this browser, failure to follow basic internet hygiene protocol will get you infected…

Peace and safe computing!

Catwhisperer

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