Cocoon for Internet Explorer

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on April 17, 2012

Virtual World Computing's Cocoon is a free online security solution with customized extensions for several popular browsers, such as Internet Explorer. With Cocoon for Internet Explorer, you can browse and communicate safely, securely, and anonymously inside IE, at home or on the go. You can log on from public Wireless Access Points and unfamiliar networks, and Cocoon will keep you safe from sites that monitor your online activity. In addition to protecting your privacy, Cocoon also protects you from viruses, malware, and other online threats. It stores your browsing history, cookies, and other data securely in your online account, so threats never get near your computer. We tried Cocoon in IE9.

Cocoon has a customized installation process for each Web browser; Internet Explorer's wizard has a few extra steps. We pressed Cocoon's PC-style Power On button to log on to our account. To access Cocoon, you'll need to create a free account using your e-mail address; you can have as many accounts as email addresses. Logging on activates the toolbar's controls, such as its History, Mailslots, and Help views, as well as the button opening the online Settings page. Cocoon let us store and manage our browser cookies, browsing history, and other data online. Cocoon uses proxy servers to keep you safe from prying eyes and pinging servers, though it's probably the easiest proxy tool we've tried, automatically testing and establishing connections. Like most proxy connections, Cocoon slows you down a bit, and your favorite sites may load more slowly. It's a small price to pay for Cocoon's advantages, though, especially for road warriors and others who access a lot of public networks. The Mailslots feature lets you create secure e-mail accounts, which is also nice for traveling. An especially useful feature is the forms manager page, which let us store saved form data securely and remotely instead of on our PC.

Mobile users will appreciate the way they can access their Cocoon accounts simply by entering their e-mail address and password on any PC that has Cocoon's software. Cocoon's accounts include premium options that add services, but the free tool worked well for us.