Now this is a blast, we all know Internet browsing these days has a certain level of danger in it?  Many sites have (knowingly or by using a advertisment rotation system) had malware scripts on their pages, and thus after visiting a few web-sites you may be infected by god only know what.

One of the reasons is that users most often have Administrative rights attached to their account, this is often needed in order to do anything, however it would be nice if you could tighten certain programs so they had demoted rights.  Well you may recall me mentioning Sandbox IE?  This will do sort of that, however there is an even simpler and cheaper way to obtain basic security.

DropMyRights.exe is a small exe file you can use to launch other applications with (eg. Internet Explorer or Firefox), the neat thing is that DropMyRights make sure the launched program do NOT have admin rights but only basic userrights (you can even with parameters tighten this further although I do not reccomend this).

So its as simple as this;

• Download DropMyRights.exe (alternate download site)
• Place it in %windir%SYSTEM32
• Create a shortcut on the desktop that launches DropMyRights.exe with “%programfiles%Internet Exploreriexplore.exe” as parameter.

Now when you launch this shortcut the Inetnet Explorer launched will NOT have Admin rights and is thus somewhat protected against malware. Note; this is no where near the sandboxie protection, but it will still add A LOT to the security – its especially useful for Kids and Grandparents (but even we regular users can benefit greatly from this).

Read more;
http://www.techsupportalert.com/safe-surfing.php#c
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972827.aspx

The Easy way to get started;
Download the MSI Installer I created that installs DropMyRights.exe to your “%windir%system32” and creates a desktop shortcut.

Pros;
Added security with no overhead, easy to use and implement

Cons;
Requires the DropMyRights.exe file to be on your pc, Some websites require ActiveX components to be installed in order to work (eg. YouTube requires flash) however just install these once using the regular unprotected IE then the ActiveX component is installed and the site will likely run fine in protected mode.

PS.
Works not only for IE but for all applications including Firefox, your mail software, Instant Messenger etc etc.

Tests using Windows Vista was inconclusive (Under Vista I managed to install Google Toolbar even with the browser running under DropMyRights, a notepad started was however unable to save a txt document to c:windows – hence inconclusive) Windows XP however seem to work without glitches (from what I can tell).  If you have other experiences do tell..