MSN Tech & Gadgets posted their review of the three biggest threats on the Internet for 2007; IE, phishing attacks, and malware.
Even Microsoft agrees that IE is a security mistake waiting to happen and users should be using Firefox and Opera, not IE!
IE provides the biggest payoff for malicious hackers who set out to exploit its flaws.
The biggest problem with IE is its reliance on Microsoft’s ActiveX technology, which allows Web sites to run executable programs on your PC via your browser. Security patches and upgrades, including Windows XP’s Service Pack 2 and the recently released IE 7, make ActiveX safer, but the inevitable flaws that allow malware to circumvent those security measures–combined with the reality that we computer users are often a credulous lot–make ActiveX a risk not worth taking. Happily, with very few exceptions (such as Microsoft’s Windows Update site), you can browse the Internet effectively without ActiveX.
MSN : Thwart the Three Biggest Internet Threats of 2007
Sure this is a reprint from PC World, but the irony is deadly and one has to wonder who’s doing the quality control over at MSN and how long this article will stay posted.
[Thanks to Sushubh Mittal for sending this story in 🙂 ]
