Use a safe browser
If you are using Internet Explorer(IE) or any of the “derived” Explorer products you are not surfing securely.
We do not need to point you to the continuing history of vulnerabilities and security holes that Microsoft itself acknowledges. We simply have to point out that because Internet Explorer massively dominates the web, it is the browser that the hackers target the most.
But you should understand that there is a fundamental structural reason why hackers will always target IE. Just as it does with its office suite and almost everything it touches, Microsoft chose to integrate much of the browser with the operating system. Because the browser has access to the core operating system of the computer, hackers have more to gain by compromising it.
There can be some inconvenience in not using Internet Explorer. Historically, Microsoft has built its update and support web sites to break for users not employing the Microsoft browser. Recently, however, we have found that while it may be impossible to use the automatic update links through Firefox, the Microsoft downloads site can still be accessed and the operating system’s own Windows Update service will work as expected unless you do something to specifically disable Internet Explorer rather than simply installing FireFox as your default browser.
It is the judgment of experts and reviewers that the far safer choice is to install and use Firefox.
Nothing is 100% secure in the fast changing field of internet software. But Firefox has a large number of advantages.
First it is not tightly connected to the operating system so it is not as good a target.
Second, when a potential problem is discovered, there is a large community of developers who immediately get to fixing it. Because the publisher, the Mozilla Foundation, is a nonprofit organization, there is no financial motivation to cover up or minimize the vulnerability. And because the programmers are part of a volunteer community there are no executives who can tell them that other commercial priorities come first and the fix will have to wait a couple of months.
From a purely practical perspective, Firefox is faster than other browsers and it is highly customizable to do things your way. A continually growing library of free Extensions is developed including some seriously useful ones that add to your protection such as No Script.
The huge range of extensions available for Firefox means you really can build a browser to suit your own needs and preferences, from the way it looks to the jobs it can do for you.
As well, there are an increasing number of web sites that are making life difficult for Internet Explorer users because those sites do not want to be part of an insecure web.
So go now, get FireFox and get a little safer. It’s free so you have nothing to lose:
If you have a usability problem or a technical problem that cannot be resolved, let us know by e-mail to: .
With open source software you depend for “service” on the community, which our experience proves out as very helpful. But, if you are trying to get help and can’t find it, we want to know that too. Those we recommend need to care about the users and if we see evidence of unavailable help or bad faith we can remove the recommendation from our list of the best tools. Tells us about such incident reports in the Software Forums.
