News > Geek > 21 More Reasons to use Firefox

news
MONDAY FEBRUARY 13 2006 7:06 AM

21 More Reasons to use Firefox

Submitted by jake_lex

Edited by Shal

There's a general perception that using Firefox is safer than using Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Now, we have some numbers to back that up. According to a study, you are up to 21 times more likely to get spyware using IE than you are using Firefox.

"We can't say whether Firefox is a safer browser or not," said Henry Levy, one of the two University of Washington professors who, along with a pair of graduate students, created Web crawlers to scour the Internet for spyware in several 2005 forays. "But we can say that users will have a safer experience [surfing] with Firefox."

In May and October, Levy and colleague Steven Gribble sent their crawlers to 45,000 Web sites, cataloged the executable files found, and tested malicious sites' effectiveness by exposing unpatched versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox to "drive-by downloads." That's the term for the hacker practice of using browser vulnerabilities to install software, sometimes surreptitiously, sometimes not.

"We can't say IE is any less safe," explained Levy, "because we choose to use an unpatched version [of each browser.] We were trying to understand the number of [spyware] threats, so if we used unpatched browsers then we would see more threats."

That is, installing the many, many security "fixes" Microsoft has issued for IE might narrow the gap somewhat. The question remains, too, if the increase in security with Firefox is due to the fact that it is fundamentally more secure than IE is, or because hackers just haven't attacked Firefox as viciously as they've gone after IE, and this gap will close in the future. For now, though, isn't it time you got Firefox?

PAGE:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Comments

matt87

United Kingdom

January 2006

FEB 13, 2006 07:41 AM

i suppose it's a good job i'm using Firefox / Safari...On Mac OS X Then.....IE has been a complete twat since it was first released...i wonder if Microsoft will 'fix' that with the release of Windows Vista (aka Longhorn).........

[Edited on Feb 13, 2006 3:41PM]

Idjit

HOPEFUL

I'm lost

FEB 13, 2006 07:42 AM

Too bad Firefox still doesn't work right.

Shal

Los Angeles, CA

October 2002

FEB 13, 2006 08:12 AM

Idjiit said:
Too bad Firefox still doesn't work right.

You always say that. What doesn't Firefox do? I haven't encountered a single webpage (except on Microsoft's site) that doesn't work in Firefox.

dogslife

Toronto, ON

April 2003

FEB 13, 2006 08:16 AM

Idjiit said:
Too bad Firefox still doesn't work right.

I've been using it exclusively for a couple of years now. On the rare occasion when a page won't load correctly (I can think of only 1 in the last 6 months) I always have the "IE Tab" extension to fall back on, and it works a hell of a lot faster than getting IE to load on its own. The other 99.99% of the time FF gives me no grief at all.

Not saying it's not letting you down, but I don't think it's fair to say it "doesn't work right."

Cigarette

Cleveland, OH

April 2004

FEB 13, 2006 08:17 AM

Shalome said:

Idjiit said:
Too bad Firefox still doesn't work right.

You always say that. What doesn't Firefox do? I haven't encountered a single webpage (except on Microsoft's site) that doesn't work in Firefox.

Oddly enough, SuicideGirls is the only site that Firefox has trouble with for me. If I have multiple tabs open (four or five), and I hit Submit on a comment, it sometimes causes Firefox to crash. But that's my only complaint.