A toolbar is a panel on your computer that holds a row of icons or menus. Use a toolbar to put menus and icons you frequently use in a convenient place. Customize downloadable toolbars, as well as the toolbars on your browser, to make your computer tasks more convenient.

Toolbars are a good way to accomplish tasks efficiently on the computer, but you have to beware of ones that could harm your computer or help a hacker steal your private information. Protect yourself from malicious toolbars and other malware; get your toolbar download from a reputable website only. Seek recommendations from knowledgeable websites before downloading a toolbar you know nothing about.

Browser toolbars fall into three categories:

1. Legitimate toolbars made by reputable companies to perform useful functions;

2. Sneaky toolbars that may have useful features but often try to trick you into installing them when you're trying to install something else;

3. And malicious toolbars that do something unwanted, which can include simply changing your browser’s home page to collecting private data and sending it to hackers.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Safely surf the Internet with toolbars

Protect yourself from pop-up ads, spyware, websites that hijack your browser's home page and phishing scams with a security toolbar.

I recommend: Protect your computer from several types of online threats with the AVG Security Toolbar, available with commercial products from AVG Technologies. Surf the Internet safely using the Spywall, an Anti-spyware toolbar from Trlokom, Inc.

Make Internet searching more efficient with a search toolbar

An Internet toolbar is what most people think of when they think of a toolbar. You can install several toolbar add-ons in popular web browsers to make various tasks easier. The most common is a search toolbar, which aids searching by suggesting search terms, saving terms you've searched for in the past or providing quick links to sites you frequently visit.

I recommend: Install a toolbar with customizable buttons and smart search options from Google. Quickly search using over 100 different search engines with the Advanced Searchbar compatible with Internet Explorer.

Add toolbar buttons and customize the toolbars of other popular web browsers

Many toolbars offer the opportunity to add or remove buttons, which means you can use the features you find the most useful and reduce the size of the toolbar by removing unwanted icons.

I recommend: Choose from hundreds of specialized search engines from Mycroft Project and add them to the web browser toolbar for Mozilla Firefox 2.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Fit more favorite links on your browser's bookmark toolbar by renaming the links to a shorter name or changing the text that shows on the toolbar.
• •  Remove malicious toolbars and other spyware by installing and running anti-spyware applications such as Spybot Search & Destroy or Ad-Aware by Lavasoft.
• •  Surf the web right from your Windows taskbar: right-click on the taskbar at the bottom of your Windows screen, select 'Toolbars' and then 'Address' from the menus that pop up. This will add an address bar to your taskbar where you can type a web URL.