I've recently been trying out a new (to me, anyway) piece of PC security software called Voodoo Shield. It aims to warn you if a program or web site is trying to install any new software or component without your knowledge. And my results seem to suggest that it actually does a very good job.

When you first install Voodoo Shield it takes a quick inventory of all the installed software on your computer, including browser add-ins and anything else that could be regarded as a program. This only takes a few seconds. Once this is done, the program sits quietly in the background waiting for you to open a web browser. As soon as you do, VS springs into action and watches to see if any new program is about to be installed on your PC. If this happens, it blocks it by default. You don't have to do anything, except to click on the warning message if you're sure you want to allow the installation. Assuming you don't (and you probably don't), just carry on surfing, safe in the knowledge that Voodoo Shield has just protected your PC.

Voodoo Shield works happily alongside your existing antivirus software so there's nothing to uninstall. The program is a 4 MB download from https://voodooshield.com/ and is malware-free according to VirusTotal and Web of Trust.

Note that the current version doesn't support the Edge browser on Windows 10, but this is presumably on its way (there's a new release currently in beta). Otherwise, it seems to work very well. The screen shot shows me (on my test PC) clicking on a video player plugin that's clearly designed to look like an Official Adobe add-in, which Voodoo Shield correctly identified and blocked.

Although VS costs $19.99 per year, the basic version (which does everything I've described so far) is free for non-commercial use.