As the days and months go by, more and more reports are released about how Internet Explorer has, yet another, security hole. These holes provide mischievous programmers with openings to create applications that could break into your computer. But you ask, who would do such a thing?
Almost a month ago while at work, I noticed several popup windows launching on my computer throughout the day. This wasn't supposed to be happening since I have the Google Toolbar installed for Internet Explorer. If you use IE and haven't installed that on your machine, you should. It's a nice little program that adds another toolbar into IE – it blocks popup windows and allows you to search google.com without going to Google.
For some reason, the Google Toolbar wasn't blocking certain popups. It turns out that I had adware and spyware on my machine. I didn't intentionally install these programs, but they got on my machine somehow. It took me two weeks to fully clean my computer from these programs, and if you need help doing this to your machine, just let me know.
So, back to the whole Internet Explorer problem. It's a shame that IE has these issues, since over 90% of people use some version of the browser. It's also a shame that Microsoft isn't planning on releasing a new version of the software for the next two years. TWO YEARS? Their browser, aside from these mounting security issues, is falling behind in what it offers users. The only reason I use IE now is because I make web sites, and the sites I make have to work on IE... otherwise I use Safari (for Mac) or Firefox.
These two browsers are great and are light years ahead of IE. Not only do they offer better features: tabbed browsing, built-in popup blocking, google searching, etc... but they're also more standards compliant – which means a great deal to me for my line of work.
I suggest that everyone upgrade their browsers to something that works and doesn't present security issues. Plus, we need to send a message to Microsoft. You're not stuck using that browser that came on your machine. So, go out there, support the little guys, and surf the web better. But, as Levar Burton would say, "you don't have to take my word for it."
+ original post date: July 5, 2004 11:13 PM
+ categories: Web Stuff
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