Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Firefox Users Surf Safer

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the loose-browsers-sink-ships dept.

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."

3 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. How about a four-way matchup... by PFI_Optix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From TFA:

    "We can't say IE is any less safe," explained Levy, "because we choose to use an unpatched version [of each browser.] We were trying to understand the number of [spyware] threats, so if we used unpatched browsers then we would see more threats."

    I hope they used a very old version of Firefox. Comparing FF1.5 to an old unpatched version of IE is hardly a fair comparison.

    They should have patched both browsers and had them run the same crawl. Then we could see how each browser in its most current state handles spyware, and how much each one has improved via patch releases.

    --
    120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
    1. Re:How about a four-way matchup... by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 5, Informative
      They used computers running Windows XP without Service Packs 1 or 2. They tested IE 6.0 (no details about any patch installs separate from the [lack of] service packs) against Firefox 1.0.6. This is all from their paper (warning pdf), which has numerous other details.

      Somebody should start a news site that takes all the top news stories, finds the original research or primary source, and links to that instead of the dumbed-down yet sensationalistic news wire blurbs and blog whores. I know I'd appreciate it.

      --
      main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
  2. Re:Who cares? by OneSeventeen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So if I user never heard of Firefox, but has heard of spyware, this study won't change anthing? I work in a department that switching to Firefox would solve 25% of the tech support calls, but the users still insist on IE because they don't know the severity of the situation, and also don't even know what Firefox is. This article will actually help to prove to the non-techies that switching would be a good idea.

    --
    "Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis