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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 way. I never would have noticed, I mean, with me using Firefox on an unprotected windows system/u> for over a year, and not getting a single virus/piece of spyware.
Please dear God, let there be no "Hang 10" jokes in this thread...
Whoops, should have RTFAed. They intentionally used unpatched browser versions to maximize infections. That's really sucktacular of them. They should have at least included a fully updated XP SP2 IE in its default "secured by Microsoft" state, as an experimental control.
next week: "Professors Discover Sky Blue, Grass Green".
free software, open standards, open file formats, no software patents.
In other news the grass is green!
Shick's Law: There is no problem a good miracle can't solve.
Most people savvy enough to install and use Firefox are generally more aware of the risks and have safer habits in general. I'm not sure if this study will do much beyond stating the obvious otherwise. However, it's good to have concrete data for posterity's sake.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...