Comments on: Critics rap Microsoft safety study of IE, Firefox

Redmond executive says IE is the safer bet after comparing vulnerabilities in the two browsers, but some say the study is flawed.

[zoepod]

filepicker

Hi I dont really know who is right on this opinion, but I do know that I have in 1 year have had to remove firefox twice and re-install as I keep getting something called filepicker which in turn stops me from downloading anything from the internet. Any ideas????

[Gunady]

Reply for "I am PC, I am Mac" thing..

If Mac can do it, Microsoft can also do it, just in a different form, to different company. Mac Ad gets wild and wilder nowaday. Firstly, I thought it's very funny, but, now it's ridiculous.

[Mproject]

Microsoft is doomed

Microsoft is dead.

[The_happy_switcher]

I wouldn't trust Microsoft

any further than I could throw that tubby Steve Ballmer.

[busybluebee]

IE freezeups

Everytime I opened the explorer first after computer start ups, I got locked or frozen so I had to use firefox to get messages fast. After I shut down the explorer and restarted the IE, It worked like charm. They(Microsoft) have not given the fix for that first frozen startup. There are some items that IE worked but not in firefox and vice versa. I am a longtime user of both but I like firefox, mostly since mozilla started netscape but I haven't mostly used netscape since american online brought this brouser company out.

[joejoe_19]

Microsoft is full of it.

I have fixed more machines that are infected with viruses, trojan's, and popups running IE in the last month than I care to count. I've used Mozilla or Firefox for years now and I don't have near the issues I always had with IE. I experience less pop-ups, trojans, etc. Everytime I fix a friends CPU I install Firefox and tell them to stop using IE. Don't believe the hype from Microsoft.

[rashinal]

imagine...

.. reading an article that says a MS study shows competing product is superior in
any way shape or form.
If that makes you laugh out loud then that's your clue.
If it doesn't, you are clueless.
IE by any measure is the worst browser available; slow, bloated, full of holes, tied to
the OS (!!! think about that !!) One must ask then, why is it SO important for MS to
trick, cajole, force people into using it ?
Why does MS care so much that you use it ?
Consider also, that it is NOT standards compliant and is totally proprietary.
You might also ask why MS has so aggressively bribed (i mean "seeded") developers
to code websites that ONLY work with IE (and that can ONLY be developed with MS
tools) rather than use open standards that ANY other browser can use.
The point being that MS's entire business model rests upon being incompatible and
proprietary while the internet (and all it's great promise) DEPENDS on being OPEN and accessible.
NOTHING MS will ever be secure, as long as MS continues to pursue the proprietary
model. (uhh, look at the recent breaches at Oak Ridge and LosAlamos .. it could
NOT have happened had they been on OSX, for instance).
MS's shameless and dishonest pandering the "security' of it's crappy product is only
for it's own financial gain and to secure controlling share of the internets
middleware. It in no way benefits the consumer masses.
NOONE should be using IE.

[cpopken]

Who really cares?

I use IE7 all the time and have never had a problem with virusus or spyware. I think security risks are just something MS haters just use to try to justify their hatred of MS.

I do use Firefox from time to time, I just don't like it very much. If you people get this worked up about an internet browser you seriously need to get a life.

[jimcbr]

Silliest thing I've ever heard

Comparing safety based on how many bugs were fixes is the silliest thing I've ever heard. The way you compare safety is by seeing how many viruses you get from using the product.

When I used Internet Explorer/Outlook mail reader, I kept getting viruses on a regular basis. Then I switched to Opera/Opera mail reader. A browser is a browser, and Outlook certainly has more features than Opera mail reader, but I've never had any problems with viruses since then. Not once.

[chash360]

No problems because...

You have not had any issues because you are now using standards compliant software, that will treat a SMTP E-Mail, exactly like and SMTP E-Mail and not a webpage, executing whatever arbitrary code is attached upon viewing the e-mail. It will treat a webpage like a basic web page handling the standard HTML tags correctly, without executing whatever arbitrary code is attached with proprietary scripting and ActiveX controls. If you allow scripting, when it has an error it is properly handled instead of left hanging to collect whatever malware was pushed on the stack before the error was intentionally triggered by those specially crafted web pages, which are also M$'s fault.

These are the things M$ does, trying to tell you that you get all this wonderful window dressing capabilities with your webpages (but never mind the 100's of security violations this method also delivers). I will take Plain Jane, HTML Only web pages, even text only, over the overdressed hype they put out now. If it gets too bad, I'll go back to the gopher interface (pre-HTTP/HTML)!

You would not believe the speed of text-only client-script-free web surfing, you might even find slow dial-up speeds acceptable then.

[herak1337us]

philosophically speaking...

i think the difference in the time commitment shows the type of
mindset these two organizations cater two. in one, you have
people eager to do the same thing-- use one browser, or os,
really a business model- for 10 years. and i guess you need
that sort of stability if you want to do that sort of thing. but
then again-- is such an expectation realistic? the only way to
prosper to evolve, and it seems that Mozilla at least has the
right idea. do we really want a web that stays the same for ten
years? we'd still be waiting for tabbed browsing.

[ramudd]

Would never change to IE

I would NEVER use IE. Only reason I have it is that some Windows programs won't run unless you have IE on your system. That sucks of course but I guess M$ needed a way to keep their browser around.

[thedreaming]

Oh Come On!

When someone from Microsoft says their browser is better just because HIS or HER research says so, are you really going to believe them? If more than one independent research group not affiliated with Microsoft told me their browser was safer than firefox, I'll gladly switch today, but since I've yet to find anyone that's willing to lie publicly like that, I'll keep using Firefox, thank you very much.

[chash360]

Lust for updates is bad....

Remember it was M$ that brought most of the flaws and holes to begin with. HTML 1.1 spec had no client scripting, embedded objects, etc. that could even cause all the problems we see today. Now when I place my mouse over what appears to be a normal web link, it could be anything, a trojan, an advertisement, you just can't trust what the address is any more.

Remember also that software has no moving parts, it does not wear out, it does not degrade. If companies were not so keen to gouge the market for the latest version of crud, we could actually have stability and long term compatibility, becuase if it is written correctly, you do not need to re-write it (and typically they don't, even though they would like you to think they did). Just write the new suff, and add it to the existing system (this is actually what they do, but they charge you as if its all new everything, and change the preexisting stuff just enough, such that its not forward-backward compatible).

The embedded client side scripting, and the like, was never really required for any of actual functions performed over the internet today, and only serves to divide and de-standardize the web, deliver unwanted ads, spy on your activity, ensure the public will need continued updates and security patches.

In my opinion the OS and driver software should never be separated from the OEM of the hardware, lest your product become interdependant upon someone else's quality (or lack of) and not your own.

[chash360]

M$ just released 11 bug (fixes)

Yeah its so secure that there are 11 more bugs that have been there the whole time. Several of these are IE bugs, the usual memory leaks, and one in guess what? M$ proprietary DHTML Scripting!
Suprised? Windows Media player has a bug in M$'s own asf format. This of course is a remote code executing type, that can trigger just by viewing a video....It would take a lot of work for me to make such a flaw intentionally, funny they can do it by accident, over and over, and over, and over, and over....

[CMNetworx]

So, Just because IE has more known bugs and does not fix them this makes it more secure?

The words "Logic" and "Microsoft" do not belong in the same sentence..

And to all those that hate open source.. They are people that eventually got sick of the same old crap, and built their own. If you don't like something about their software, maybe you can join the community and voice your opinion.. Try getting ms to change anything about their software, ex: vista.. "I'd like the drm taken out, thanks!"

[explorerfix]

I invented a definitive and absolute patch for explorer safety fix.
go to setings and set proxy server to 127.0.0.1:8080

And you'll never ever have any problem with explorer.
It also solves problem with:
icq spam
mediaplayer safety problems
and all software witch uses internet virus uploader explorer...