For all the viewers who are concerned about malicious active x, The two addons from fire fox adblock and noscript will not let you add malicious scripts. Even internet explorer7 has defense against active x. It will ask you before you install it. For popup, all browsers block popup nowadays and you have that feature in tool-->options-->content-->block pop-up windows. to control cookies, you can also you forefox's default mechanism. Click tools-->options -->privacy and under private data tick always clear my private data when I close firefox. Also, in the same page under cookies, you can manipulate you setup.