France Tells Its Citizens To Abandon IE, Others Disagree

Freistoss writes "Microsoft still has not released a patch for a major zero-day flaw in IE6 that was used by Chinese hackers to attack Google. After sample code was posted on a website, calls began for Microsoft to release an out-of-cycle patch. Now, France has joined Germany in recommending its citizens abandon IE altogether, rather than waiting for a patch. Microsoft still insists IE8 is the 'most secure browser on the market' and that they believe IE6 is the only browser susceptible to the flaw. However, security researchers warned that could soon change, and recommended considering alternative browsers as well." PCWorld seems to be taking the opposite stance arguing that blaming IE for attacks is a dangerous approach that could cause a false sense of security.

Comments

Re:Importance of Competitive Choices

[Thinboy00]

Because if you don't ship a browser with the OS most people would never find the Internets. I never understood this from an anti-competitive perspective. If I remember correctly, a significant factor in the MS case was that you couldn't uninstall the browser, which I again, don't really understand. A browser is integral to most computers. If you don't ship the OS with a browser, most users wouldn't be able to get on the net to find a browser. I suppose that not allowing an FTP client on the system would be next? The whole "distributing IE with Windows" is anti-competitive is predicated on the fact that if IE exists on the system most users will be too stupid to make their own choices, which in fact may be true, but I'm not a big fan of protecting people from their own stupidity by making life harder for others. I HATE IE. Do I want Windows to ship without it? No. That would make downloading Firefox that much more difficult. Using this logic cars shouldn't ship with stereos installed because that is anti-competitive vis-a-vis aftermarket manufacturers.

That has nothing to do with what the EU is actually asking MS to do (it isn't going to be another Windows XP N). The EU is going to have Windows come with a "which browser do you want to use?" screen when you first launch "the internet" (i.e. the world wide web (i.e. a browser)).