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Spyware Threat 21 Times Greater For IE Users
Microsoft dropped Internet Explorer support for Apple's OS in December. No sweat for MacHeads, since Firefox and Safari are more popular browsers. More secure, from spyware, virus and worm threats, too. It's the PC users that still deal with Microsoft's IE headaches.
PC users are as much as 21 times more likely to end up with spyware on their computers than those who use Mozilla's Firefox browser, according to a new extensive study. The test sent Web crawlers to scour 45,000 malicious Web sites for executable files that exposed unpatched versions of IE and Firefox to so-called drive-by downloads. When prompted to download a file they'd never requested, the group's IE computer was infected 1.6 percent of the time when responding "yes." Even when the group clicked "no," 0.6 percent of the domains installed the drive-by on the IE computer anyway.
By contrast, 0.9 percent of the domains infected the Firefox browser when the group input "yes," while none of the domains infected it when the group input "no." While these numbers may not seem like much, the professors said one must consider the billions and billions of Web pages out there.
With IE, most of the exploits were based on ActiveX and JavaScript vulnerabilities--two technologies that have long taken the blame for many IE problems. Firefox does not support ActiveX; many of its supporters believe that to be a big reason why Firefox is considered to be a more secure browser.
Here at the Jointblog, we use Firefox for the design and for all coding and post upload editing. Take a recommendation: Stop using Internet Explorer, unless you like getting your computer sick.
TechWeb News article
posted by Unknown @ Friday, February 10, 2006,
