Mainstream media turns against Internet Explorer
Tech industry journalists suggesting Internet Explorer users try another browser is about as unusual as the Pope suggesting Catholicism is worth a look. But mainstream media outlets outright suggesting a switch is still noteworthy.
That’s exactly what’s happening today with several major newspaper and broadcaster Web sites suggesting a switch to Firefox or Google Chrome may be the safest way to ride out a major security breach in Internet Explorer.
As we reported last week, the bug’s discovery came too late for inclusion in the scheduled Patch Tuesday monthly update. Not only has Microsoft yet to fix the problem, it’s now become widely and actively exploited.
The good news is that at the moment it appears the hackers are mainly interested in getting their hands on passwords for online computer games. The bad news is that Microsoft themselves say 10,000 Web sites have now been tweaked to exploit the loophole, and 0.2 percent of internet users have visited such a site. That may not sound like much, but it means a couple of million people may have been hit worldwide.
Microsoft’s advice is to keep anti-virus software up to date, run Internet Explorer in protected mode, set the program’s security zone to ‘High’ and make sure you have the latest updates installed. The latter, while good practice, is of little use until Microsoft actually issues a patch for this problem.
While normally mainstream outlets would often just print this advice, this problem seems to have struck such a chord that they aren’t just touting the Microsoft line. The media is full of comments such as:
“Many security experts, though, have advised Internet Explorer users switch to another browser until an update is released.” (The Times, quoting the Associated Press as do many newspapers)
“The easiest way to keep your computer safe is to stop using Internet Explorer.” (Washington Post)
“For now, you are better off switching over to Opera or Firefox as your main browser. Actually, if you use internet banking or any other online secure password access (online shopping, etc), you’ll be much safer using [these browsers].” (Malaysia Star)
It will be interesting to see how many readers take this advice – and whether they stick with the rival browsers. If that’s the case, the BBC may be right in its prediction that, “This could be the moment when the minnows in the browser wars finally score a significant victory.”
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