Have you ever driven a vehicle without brakes at 70 mph on the Interstate? If you have, your vehicle is an accident waiting to happen.
If you’re still using Internet Explorer (IE) to browse the Internet, your PC is likewise an accident ready to happen.
It doesn’t matter if your PC is fully updated and you receive automatic updates from Microsoft to fix recently discovered security holes. It doesn’t matter if you only use your Internet connection occasionally. And it doesn’t matter if you use a slow dial-up connection instead of an "always-on" cable or DSL connection.
Why? Because it sometimes takes Microsoft days or even weeks to patch some of the most serious vulnerabilities in its programs—especially IE.
Now, I realize that a supposedly "secure" version of IE is now available—IE 7.0—and it’s a big improvement over previous versions. However, IE 7.0 causes compatibility problems with a lot of software and for that reason most of IE’s user base still browses with earlier versions.
Here’s a sobering statistic, courtesy of The Washington Post’s "Security Fix" blog (click here to read it). For a total 284 days in 2006 (or more than three-quarters of the year), it was possible to download programs designed to take advantage of unpatched "critical" flaws in pre-7.0 versions of IE. A "critical flaw" is a programming vulnerability that allows an attacker to seize control of your PC and steal data, delete files, eavesdrop on your e-mail correspondence, etc.
Increasingly, targeted PCs are used for criminal purposes. For instance, child pornographers often hijacked PCs access illegal Web sites, while hiding the intruder’s identity. Infected machines can be used for storing files without the knowledge of the computer’s owner. In several cases, this has led to arrest and even imprisonment of the infected PC’s owner!
Fortunately, it’s no longer necessary to use the IE accident-waiting-to-happen. Several excellent alternative browsers now exist. My favorite is Mozilla Firefox (http://www.firefox.com), which now has about a 14% share of the browser market. (IE has nearly a 80% market share–one reason why it’s most often targeted by hackers.)
Firefox isn’t perfect, but it’s much safer than IE. Security Fix reports there were only nine days in 2006 in which in which exploit code for a serious security hole could be downloaded from the Internet before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem. Firefox is also much easier than IE to configure for maximum privacy and security.
Unfortunately, it’s not yet possible to use Firefox with all Web sites. Some on-line banking and e-commerce sites—thankfully a decreasing number—only support Internet Explorer. To do much of anything on the Microsoft’s Web site, you need to be running IE. And some lazy programmers effectively design "Internet Explorer only" Web sites by using non-standard features that are proprietary to Microsoft.
Why is anyone is still using IE as their primary browser, especially when it takes only about 10 minutes to download Firefox, install it, and import your bookmarks from Internet Explorer into it?
If "anyone" is YOU, I urge you to put aside what you’re doing and spend only 10 minutes installing Firefox. You’ll be doing yourself a huge favor from a PC security standpoint.
Oh, and don’t forget—Firefox can’t protect you from Internet viruses and other "malware" by itself. You still need a good anti-virus program and firewall program to surf the Internet safely.
