Whether you're a novice user or you've got years of web-browsing experience under your belt, it never hurts to have a little extra protection while you surf the Internet. In this installment of DLS 101, we'll have a look at three types of tools - browser toolbars, web services, and URL un-shorteners - that can help keep you safe while you browse!

Web browser toolbars
These options all work in Internet Explorer and Firefox.

McAfee SiteAdvisor and WebOfTrust (pictured) are great ways to use the "power of the crowd" to keep you safe. Both services keep tabs on the reliability, safety, and trustworthiness of websites. They'll alert you with a big red flag if something nasty is headed your way.

There's also Finjan Secure Browsing, which checks web pages for malicious code and alerts when it finds potential spyware activity on a page.

Many antivirus provider's now include a browser toolbar with their software when you purchase it, including Norton, McAfee, and AVG. They all provide a little extra protection for you while you surf.

"Daddy, what's a bookmarklet?" A childish question, perhaps, but not a question a child might ask. The kid might also call them favelets if he was raised on a diet of Internet Explorer. A bookmarklet, or favelet comes from "bookmarks" and "favorites" that you would save in your browser. Bookmarklets are Javascript applications in the form of URLs, and wherever you can store a URL, you can store a bookmarklet. Usually you drag them from the page to your bookmark bar, or you can add them like any favorite or bookmark.

A bookmarklet functions much like a button, but instead of just taking you to a website (like your garden variety bookmark), it does something at that website as well. As I said, it is an application. Some bookmarklets are used to modify a website, even if the effect is an illusion on your machine. Javascript can do some crazy cool things in a browser, and bookmarklets can similarly do some crazy cool things. Unfortunately each browser handles Javascript just a bit differently (and different versions of a browser will behave differently), so your mileage may vary.

Bookmarklets are commonly used to quickly tie into websites that allow you to share information. For example, this handy Delicious bookmarklet that allows you to easily save a URL to your Delicious bookmarks. Normally you'd copy the URL, go to Delicious, then paste it in to the right place and fill out the metadata. With the bookmarklet you simply hit the button (the bookmarklet in your bookmarks bar, or elsewhere in your bookmarks) and it will take whatever site you're on, send you to Delicious, and fill out the URL and title. It usually suggests some tags as well.

Lots of sites provide handy bookmarklets, including VodPod, Tumblr, Reddit and FriendFeed. But here are a few resources you might find handy or fun:

• The Internet Archive has a Wayback bookmarklet so you can see previous versions of a website instamagically (scroll down a bit).
• Prank your friends with the ability to edit any website (well, not Flash sites) using this fun bookmarklet.
• Opera users? Here's a pile of bookmarklets just for you.
• Ever wanted to read some text on a web page in big text, one word at a time? Check out the nifty Spreeder bookmarklet to do just that.
• Finally there's the spiffy Rollyo, which adds a search to any page you visit. Plus, you can save your searches for later.

If you missed it the first time, Lee recently put together a list of 15+ handy bookmarklets.

[Hat tip to Lifehack for another excellent list of bookmarklets]

One of the most common problems I tackle on Windows computers is the removal of rogue antivirus programs. Just what is a rogue antivirus? It's malware that disguises itself as a legitimate antivirus program.

Unlike Avast, AVG, Kaspersky, Norton, or any of the other real antivirus options out there, a rogue will do nothing to protect you. Rather, it's going to try to deceive you into paying for a full version or removal tool. It may even open a backdoor to your system and start downloading other annoying, nasty programs.

How do these programs get on people's computers in the first place? Usually through deceptive pop-ups on web. Often these "alerts" will try to trick you into thinking:

• porn and illegal files have been found on your computer
• a scan has found virus and malware infections on your system
• your system is totally unprotected

They're all scare tactics designed to get you to clicking something that you really don't want to click. Some go to great lengths to deceive, copying actual Windows screens as closely as possible.

Most of our regular readers probably have a favorite stand-alone torrent application like uTorrent, Vuze, Transmission, etc. Our friends and family, though, who don't download via torrent all that often may not want a dedicated program.

There are plenty of other programs you can use that come with torrent downloading abilities baked right in. Here are six options I've recommended to my friends. If you have some other options to share, leave them in the comments!

Use your web browser: Opera and Wyzo (pictured above) - What better place to get support for torrents than in your web browser? WIth Opera and Wyzo (which is based on Firefox) torrents are handled just like any other download. Click a torrent, and the download manager kicks in the same as it would if you downloaded an image, document, .zip file, or whatever.

Use your file sharing program: Limewire and Frostwire - Many of you are already using one of these programs to download music, but they can also handle your torrent downloads. The newest version of Limewire features much-improved torrent support (thanks to the LibTorrent project). Frostwire is built on Limewire's foundation, and provides the same functionality. One key difference is that Frostwire won't ask you to upgrade to the pro version, because there isn't one.

Use a download manager: Free Download Manager and FlashGet - FDL does tons of great things that you'll appreciate. It can accelerate and resume your downloads, grab Flash videos from sites like YouTube, easily upload files to share with your friends, and tell you what the community thinks about the files you download. FlashGet also does download acceleration and resuming, and it adds some handy download organization features. And, of course, they both support torrents!