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BBC says "Avoid Explorer"

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-disagreement-here dept.

twitter writes "Citing security flaws that lead to ads and spys on Microsoft infested computers the BBC in this article recomends avoiding Internet Explorer." Ain't it the truth? Mostly its about adware & spyware and other wretched bits of software that make the internet suck a little more each day.

3 of 529 comments (clear)

  1. Re:IE by BurritoWarrior · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My mon doesn't know what .cz is, nor should she have to. Don't blame the users because IE is an insecure piece of junk. That is like saying "it doesn't matter that your car is a deathtrap, just avoid getting into a collision". And IE's insecurity has NOTHING to do with it being popular. It was insecure long before it had any market share.

    As an aside, my mom also doesn't know what IE is. To get on "the internet" she click on that "little lizard thing" I set up for her.

  2. unfortunately.. by zozzi · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I reported a compliance bug with a web page whereby the authors used some proprietory tags which are not W3C compliant. I filed the bug under Mozilla too but the official reply was: "It's not a bug, we're following the standard and not accepting propr. tags". Unfortunately, rather than acknowledging their mistake and fixing it (heck I pointed out the line numbers, offered patches and gave them a URL showing these problem tags and a solution on how to fix them) here's their reply:

    ---

    Thank you for your e-mail. In reply to your queries both Mygo and go mobile's website are designed for IE5 and upwards and this is Company policy.

    We are aware that not everyone uses IE. However, IE offers certain features which other browsers do not. Using these, we are able to use a greater array of features which allow us to design better interfaces. 84.3 per cent of the internet population uses Internet Explorer. More than 98 percent of the hits on go mobile's website originate from IE.

    ---

    I mailed them again telling them it's nonsense (browsers reporting themselves as being IE etc) and that there are alternatives to make it work for both but surprise surprise! no reply. Bugzilla contains a number of other websites suffering from this condition (inc. Microsoft, no surprises here).

    Therefore Mozilla follow standards so page X won't work and page X authors follow market so they won't fix it. What does BBC recommend I do in this case?

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  3. What about the companies behind spyware? by job0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unfortunately a lot of people don't actually read the EULA. They just click through until the software is installed. Even if you do read it it's full of dense obscure legal language that mostly doesn't apply to you. Advertising software if implemented correctly can allow developers to make money from their software without requiring the end user to pay.

    The problem is it's often not done properly. There are spyware apps like aureate that operate in stealth mode by passing themselves off as Windows system processes and making sure that they don't even show up the task list or binding themselves to winsock so that you delete or uninstall them your Internet connection stops working. Microsoft should be made to fix these holes in IE but I think some pressure should also be applied to the people that write these programs.