Is It Time to Ditch IE?

[Spock]

Ref: PCWorld News

Is It Time to Ditch IE?
Feds say switching browsers is one way to deal with security threats.

Scott Spanbauer
From the October 2004 issue of PC World magazine

This summer the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity wing suggested that people use a different browser to deal with Internet Explorer's continuing security flaws. Could this be the beginning of the end for Microsoft's Web browser dominance? ...

Originally Posted: 2004-10-02, 12:25 am

[Spock]

there are a lot of people here where i work that are not using IE anymore but i feel as long as you got a good virus program (Norton) and a hardware firewall when u got a High speed Internet connection. you have just taken care of 99% of your possible problems.

[Spock]

Virus scanners are reactive measures. Most of the exploits with IE will not be caught by virus scanners. Assuming a virus scanner and firewall are all you need is a very risky assumption to make.

One of the recent exploits just takes a properly formatted web page that will cause IE to run things at the command line. It isn't a virus. And a firewall won't stop it if you request the page or visit it unbeknown.

The new IE releases fix plenty of these, but every day a new one is found and MS just doesn't do a good job of keeping up. The same thing will probably happen with alternate browsers, but with the open source community behind them, the fixes are usually quick and are less likely to pop up since there are more eyes on the code.

I firmly advise my customers to discontinue IE use if possible in their organization. It has a bad track record and there is absolutely no history to prove there aren't as many exploits waiting out there (or discovered and unreported) that have been found.


Would you continue to drive a car that has had tendencies to have the brakes fail? Even if the manufacturer claimed to have fixed it for the tenth time in less months? I know I wouldn't. How many times would you keep driving your 'fixed' car after it has crashed into things?

[Krank]

A small respond my part if i may;

As off now im not sure, since the IE used in windows Vista commes with extra options like phising sites thingy, yes sorry im new at this one:)
And some more....


PS.
Halenthal is better at explaining the pro's and con's of this IE extra's i think:)

[Spock]

No urgency here krank. I'm just copying over old posts from the old forum. Take a look at the subject line for the post just before yours to see when it was replied to last.

Of course, it's still a good topic or I wouldn't have copied it over. I just wish there were an easy way to bring over the rest of the data as well, i.e., the users with all their posts, etc so I could give them more credit for having the original posts.

[Ben Last]

Would you continue to drive a car that has had tendencies to have the brakes fail? Even if the manufacturer claimed to have fixed it for the tenth time in less months? I know I wouldn't. How many times would you keep driving your 'fixed' car after it has crashed into things?

But would you drive a car that had been put together by thousands of people all over the world, most of who hadn't even actually met face to face with each other?

[Krank]

On that note, all i have to say is: Knowlegde is the key here and the biggest libery we have is the internet, hence go study and built your own system, same with OS if your a pro at linux the world is yours:)

hence i have to go a long way;)