Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Users Surf Safer
SenseOfHumor writes "According to two University of Washington Professors, Firefox users have a safer browsing experience than users of IE. These researchers sent their crawlers to 45,000 websites and studied the impact on Firefox and IE." From the article: "Levy and Gribble, along with graduate students Alexander Moshchuk and Tanya Bragin, set up IE in two configurations -- one where it behaved as if the user had given permission for all downloads, the other as if the user refused all download permission -- to track the number of successful spyware installations. During Levy's and Gribble's most recent crawl of October 2005, 1.6 percent of the domains infected the first IE configuration, the one mimicking a nave user blithely clicking 'Yes;' about a third as many domains (0.6 percent) did drive-by downloads by planting spyware even when the user rejected the installations."
No, they should advise their users to use a real browser and then let them do what they will. Unless you consider yourself a babysitter, or your T&C doesn't specify that you are not responsible for the content of external links...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Since switching to Firefox I stand up from my seat much more often (every half hour) while waiting for the system to release the 1G of memory hogged by it. That has had a very positive effect on my piles problem.