It looks as if people are still getting occasional trouble with spyware and browser hijackings. The forums dedicated to computer problems still have lots of 'How do I get rid of this' enquiries and a fair number 'Hijackthis' (a malware detector) logs. Security changes made to IE when SP2 came out should have lessened instances of people getting caught. Perhaps it has to a degree but some sites are still able to install computer nasties via IE one devious way or another.
Perhaps the trouble is that IE doesn't come with some settings disabled 'out of the box'. It relies on users
setting options up. Perhaps some don't bother and others just don't know how. A number perhaps trust that IE wouldn't to do horrible things to a faithful user.
No browser is absolutely safe. Recent Firefox updates have proved that they can all have their vulnerabilities. However, some are safer than others and some get fixed quicker than others when faults are found. With that in mind, it is still worth a computer person's while (with at least a bit of interest in these things) to point out a few other options in the browser field that are generally thought to be safer right from the initial installation.
Firefox perhaps doesn't need a mention these days. By the time a few extensions are added, this is a great browser and many are turning to it. It's versatility can be it's own let-down sometimes. A problem recently was that fixing a security hole 'broke' a number of the extensions that add functionality. This meant that those fixing the issue had to find a way of updating security (to version 1.0.3) whilst keeping the extensions working. This caused a delay in the final version's release. If this had been an IE security hole, there wouldn't have been those extra functions to worry about since it hasn't got any. Even so, maybe IE would not have been fixed as quickly as Firefox.
The
Mozilla Suite has just been updated to version 1.7.7. This again is a very good browser, e-mail program and web page writing suite. A bit of customisation makes it even better.
Opera 7.54 is a good browser. I use it some of the time. It is free with a little advertising being displayed. Money must be paid to get rid of the adverts.
K-Meleon is another choice.
Some of the features found in Firefox can be added to IE with
Maxthon. This uses IE as its 'engine'. It not only adds functions to IE but can also add extra security to keep users out of trouble.
Of course, doing nothing is always easier, especially if you have no real interest in the running of computers, or are even a bit apprehensive of trying anything for fear of messing things up. However all these alternative browsers co-exist quite happily with IE and most computers usually have a good bit of disk space to download and try them out. You may even get to prefer one of them to IE.
An alternative approach to risking malware being installed is a fairly new program called 'Sandboxie' (Sandbox IE). This is where a browsing session is run from within a protected environment called a 'sandbox'. It allows unprotected browsing and at the end of the session, the sandbox folder gets dumped (after rescuing anything out of it that might be wanted). Read about that
here.
Happy surfing
Browser troubles?
Previous Topic
Index