I have never head of NoScript or Adblock Plus before. Thank god I opened this thread up!
Both of them are good stuff! IMO, NoScript has more of a learning curve but to me it's worth taking the time to get to know it. With Adblock Plus, it just a matter of subscribing to the filter that best meets your needs (EasyList USA if you are in the states).
Funny story, my wife and kids took a trip recently. While they were at one of relative's residence, my youngest child wanted to use their PC. My relative decided that it was alright for her to do so and she proceeded to surf the web like she normally does at home.
Her web surfing usually involves visiting various sites that allow you to play games online (Webkinz, Disney, Nickelodeon and few others that are not as well known). Well, she was on one of the lesser known sites and my relative happened to check to see what she was doing. After doing so he
immediately called my wife to ask her why we let her use that particular site. It seems that a lot of the advertising that was being displayed was not necessarily appropriate for kids.
My relative is strictly a Windows person and basically does not use any other browser than the IE. My wife explained to him that our child didn't see those ads when she was on the PC at home and it confused the heck out of him! "How is your husband blocking those ads?", he asked.
Unfortunately, no one could tell me the identity of the site once they returned from their trip. I was already monitoring my child's usage but have since begun to watch her even closer to see what sites she visits. By doing so I have identified and blocked at least two after testing them in IE that looked like sites that could be used to launch attacks at unsuspecting visitors. More than likely, the ads were what was being used to initiate the attacks. I would have never known if the incident had not occurred when they were away due to Adblock Plus.
I now have logs created that let me know every site that is visited from my network and proactively test them in IE & FF as time permits. If one of them looks suspicious, I block it. Sometimes it feels like I leave my job and come home to a second job of maintaining my home network. The task is much easier than it used to be as quite a bit of my chores (backups, virus scans, etc.) are now automated. They are predetermined by the schedule that is configured on that PC. It's worth it though. I rarely run into any problems and when I do, it's usually pretty easy for me to recover from them.....