In the NS6-PR3 installation, Net2Phone auto-started whenever the system was booted -- even if neither Net2Phone nor NS 6 were manually started. Unless you like to run bloat-ware on your system, choose the custom install and un-check Net2Phone! If you already installed NS6 with Net2Phone, lose the Net2Phone if you are not using it.

AIM (AOL Instant messaging) also is included in the NS6 package. If you do not use AIM, make sure you uncheck AIM in your custom NS6 install. And if you do not intend to participate in the problems feedback program, make sure you un-check that module when you install NS6.

Upgrade v. Clean Install

We strongly recommend that you do not lose your current Web browser and/or current version of Netscape when and if you download and install Netscape 6.0. Nor do you need to.

Just make sure you install NS6 into its own, separate directory and you can have and use both NS 4.x and NS-6.0. We also recommend that you do not make NS-6.0 your default browser until you are sure that you want to make NS-6.0 your primary browser -- permanently.

This installation procedure will not bring your current Netscape bookmarks into the new, NS6, installation. However, you manually can bring your old bookmarks into the new, NS6, installation. That's covered in an upcoming article.

Downloading & Installing NS6 -- Security & Privacy Issues

If you are not concerned about security and privacy issues, then you might as well skip to Section 2, below. However, if you are concerned about security and privacy, then here are some caveats and reasons to be very careful about using Netscape 6 -- or to not use Netscape 6 at all.

There are many points of view as to what constitutes security and/or privacy risks. The discussion here takes a very high security and privacy level approach. However, we do not suggest that AOL/Netscape is misusing or abusing any information it might gain or potentially gain, or even seek to gain. But the NS 6 installation and default settings do open users to potential security and privacy compromises.

In response to the statement that NS6's default preferences are set to leave users wide-open to individual privacy and system security violations, Netscape/AOL spokesperson, Derrick Mains points out Netscape 6 provides end users with very flexible and granular control over their security and privacy. For example, the Cookie Manager lets users control how cookies are set on a site-by-site and cookie-by-cookie basis.

Another Netscape spokesperson, Chris Nalls adds: The default setting of accept all cookies is the standard in browsers from Netscape and Microsoft. And cookies are not inherently dangerous.