The internet is both wonderful and risky in almost equal measure. You can access virtually all of the world's modern knowledge with just a few clicks (most of the time), but you can also fall victim to subtle scams, viruses, and other dangers. Most savvy users know how to avoid the majority of these pitfalls, but even tech enthusiasts aren't immune to smaller troubles.

Browser hijacking, back-button hijacking, pop-ups, and other similar annoyances are common, and just about everybody encounters them from time to time. Several browser and add-on makers have tried to address the problem with their own solutions, and now Malwarebytes is joining their ranks.

As of a few days ago, the company (best known for its ultra-popular and equally useful anti-virus utility) launched "Browser Guard," a free extension for Chrome and Firefox that blocks all of the irritating scams mentioned above, and more.

It also "filters out" content it deems suspicious, according to Betanews, and blocks ads and ad trackers. In short, it seems to pull features and functionality from various other similar tools and combines them into one cohesive package.

While we can't verify Browser Guard's effectiveness without extensive testing of our own, users seem to be fairly happy with it; across both Chrome and Firefox. The add-on's rating currently sits between 4 and 4.3 stars on both platforms, and collectively boasts around 180,000 users as of writing.

If you want to try it out for yourself, visit Browser Guard's official Chrome or Firefox extension page and give it a whirl.