Slashdot Mirror
Internet Explorer Users Have Low Risk Intelligence
First time accepted submitter benne2011 writes "A hoax report earlier this year claimed that people who used Internet Explorer had a lower IQ than those using other browsers. Inspired by this bit of fun, Projection Point decided to carry out a real study comparing the risk intelligence (RQ) of people using different browsers. We found that Internet Explorer users performed worse than everyone else; they had lower RQ scores and were grossly overconfident."
So first we called them stupid, and now they are grossly overconfident according to another study.
I predict the next study will show that their mothers are fatter than average, and ugly.
...Of my lack of faith in these studies.
This study would be a lot more believable if they didn't use phrases like " users of monopoly software" and actually linked to the test they gave.
(For the record, I'm not an IE user either. But the article isn't too far from spelling Microsoft with a dollar sign)
What if some of them also watch FOX News?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Of the people that bought cars this last year, the ones that bought electric cars are more educated on environment issues than those that bought sports cars.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
firefox users think they are smart,
chrome users are the douchebags of the internet,
opera users are superficial,
safari users are fashion hippies with deep pockets or high credit bills
and ofcourse....
netscape users are still on dial-up and
bbs users have something naughty to hide
I bet you were "sure" about it because of a study you read, no?
IE Users who also watch Fox News are more likely than most to be in a coma and on life support, but on their own dime... cause even in a coma, they didn't need no damn government assistance!
Of course IE users are dumber than users of FireFox, Opera or Chrome. If you look at the demographic of these other browsers they are used by "early adopters" and similar personalities that exhibit high levels of intelligence. At the same time, this is completely meaningless as IE does not cause the dumbness either and there are plenty of other items or activities that separate out people with a high IQ.
For example, you could also say the same thing about C/C++ coders since they compared to the public at large are smarter. (Not that they are so smart but rather that the general population is not.) It would be hard to argue that everybody should write code in C/C++ -- including your hair stylist -- because those who code in C/C++ are smarter than those who don't.
Most of your Window users are technologically illiterate. IE is there it works why fart around with it. To use a sort of car analogy how many people look under the hood of their car? Never mind improve it beyond stock. Now I bet the guys that heavily modify their cars have higher intelligence than the average stiff. Any person inclined to tinker with or improve things most likely is smarter than the average Joe. Average Joe is most likely to push the largest shiniest button with a flashing red light whatever the case may be, especially is the button say "Do not touch".
From Wikipedia: The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. Dunning-Kruger Effect Study was done in 99, so they are only 12 years late on this one.
IE = Windows = overconfident.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
so is this like saying people who don't know anything about cars who think their cars don't need regular maintenance will make bad decisions about their car? (yay first car analogy!)
If you look at normal people, not geeks, it is very easy to understand why it is like this.
IE == I do not care, I use whatever is default
Safari == I have heard that an Apple computer does not need antivirus, so I am taking less risks if I buy a such.
Firfox/Chrome == I am using Windows with antivirus, but I have heard Firefox/Safari is more safe choice
The difference is pretty small between each group as not everybody thinks like that. For example some buy Apple products just because they are expensive and they want to show to the rest of the world they have money. But in general i think the reasoning applies in many cases.
there's no such thing as "risk intelligence". It's a fucking made-up word by the idiot blogger in TFA. Go ahead, TRY to look it up.
I'm sure Opera is missing because all 17 users saw no point in taking the test. -posted from Opera Mobile
A sample size of 351 and the scores are 57.5, 59.8, 60.2, and 61.8. That proves what exactly?
From their website: "We define Risk Intelligence as the ability to estimate probabilities accurately."
Are they not aware of the pioneering and Nobel prize awarded studies of Tversky and Kahnemann in the 70's which demonstrated beyond any doubt that humans are terrible at estimating any kind of probability (especially risk-related ones)?
What about the 10-step percentage scale they used? Seriously, is any person able to differentiate between being "70% sure" and "80% sure" regarding any statement?
What about latent variables like the OS used? How can one possibly compare any feature of a Windows user with features of Mac or Linux user?
I can't locate any samples of the questionnaire used and I don't need to see any, because I'm 89.345943% sure they don't know what they're talking about.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is perhaps the most useful effect to use when trying to make sense of modern politics. Listen to any die-hard politico, and the more sure they are of their response, the more certain you can be of how inexperienced they are.
In today's politics, a sure, unwavering certainty is almost a sure sign of success: a "flip flopper" will get nowhere, (Mitt Romney, John Kerry take note) while idiots who never change their opinions (EG: George Bush Jr) get lots of press for "holding true" despite all the evidence to the contrary.
So, the loudest political advocates are either the idiots, or somewhat less loudly, those who actually have some idea what's going on. For those who just want to "do the right thing", without a lot of effort, it's damnably difficult to tell the difference.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I laugh, but only because I wonder if it's a real study, or a page with pretty graphs, because people on slashdot can't tell the difference.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
In another study, most people have low risk intelligence.
Low Risk Intelligence? That means that their intelligence is pretty safe, right?
...or they are just causal users, following advice given in consumer protection TV shows: Just yesterday I zapped into Planetopia yesterday (show in Germany), where they "compared" browsers and came to the conclusion Chrome for speed, Firefox for customization, Explorer for security. Sponsored report, or just a clueless reporter?
If there is any validity to this kind of study, it is merely detecting that people who use IE tend to be late adopters to new technology and that late adopters have many other properties, including low "risk intelligence". I'd also expect them to be outside of the 18-49 demographic.
It's psychological research... ofcourse it's not a real study.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The study size was 350 participants.
If you break down the percentages, they are variations of two or three people in each sample.
This is so far from statistically significant, it's laughable.
So they're on Slashdot too?
Ok, it's not strictly instead of Firefox and Chrome, but it's my default browser on my primary work machine. I'm currently running VMware Player, with a Linux machine on it, and that runs Firefox, which crashes Way Way Too Often, usually because of Flash. I do most of my web browsing there, and have NoScript, Ghostery, and AdBlock Plus, and usually a couple of other safety tools. And I keep another Virtual Machine around, with a stripped-down Linux distro with Firefox in Private Browsing Mode, which I use to read Facebook, because I don't want Facebook contaminating anything else, stealing cookies and history files, or whatever. (If there's a way to keep VMware Player paged in, using the whole 1GB I have allocated for it, instead of swapping itself out when it's not busy even though there's spare hardware RAM left, I'd appreciate pointers; I haven't found them.)
I'm also running Chrome natively, mostly for a bunch of electronics blogs like Hackaday, and occasionally for Gmail, and it's really bloated - burns almost 2GB if I have it turned on with my usual set of tabs. I'm not sure I entirely trust Google to behave themselves with Chrome, but they already know everything about my Gmail account (which I don't use for anything sensitive), and the electronics stuff doesn't get much personal information except when I'm buying equipment.
I used to run Firefox natively as my default browser, but there are a couple of problems with it - it Crashes Way Too Often, and it's also a memory hog (though better than it used to be, and not as bad as Google), and there are a couple of work applications that don't run cleanly except on IE. Until recently, it was my default browser, so if I clicked on a link in an email message, FF would either start from scratch or open another tab, spin the disk for a while while it sucked down memory, and then run, hopefully without crashing itself or crashing something else by hogging memory, and then be its usual friendly self. But I found that usually when I'm clicking on links from my work email, they're either sites I trust, or else they're work related sites like the HR website or web conference bridge that are happier running in IE, and I got tired of that.
That takes us to IE. It's IE7 because the Desktop Support department at work finally let us use IE7 instead of IE6, but is too scared to go to IE8, at least on Windows XP, and they made their saving throw against Windows Vista a couple of years ago - my next set of hardware will run Win7. And it has tabs, so it's not totally obnoxious to use, and it really doesn't crash much, so it's less obnoxious than Firefox, and it usually doesn't use a lot of memory, because I don't usually let it keep more than a couple of tabs open at a time, though it would happily be a memory pig if I let it.
(And then there's Safari and Opera, which I used to have installed - the IT department run little scanning robots that rat you out within a day if you install them, for reasons that sound more like the Software License Police rather than the IT department's normal reticence to have useful software running on our machines, and you get a call from some guy in India who's going to walk you through uninstalling them whether you like it or not. So I no longer run them.)
I suppose there's also Konqueror or other Linux-oriented browsers that I could be running in the Linux VM - are there times it's worth using them instead of Firefox?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Reading the comments in this thread it seems Slashdot users don't fair too well in the 'clicky linky' stakes.
The link to the test is at the bottom of the article.
Problem with the test however is that it is American centric, lots of stuff a non-American is less likely to know like the starting line of the decleration of independence. I guessed that the given sentence is not it because that is what everyone thinks and in these kinds of things, what everyone thinks is always wrong but it was a guess, not something I actually once learned in school or read because it was relevant to me... oh wait, that is just like an American. Never mind.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well I can tell you as a guy that has to fix the PC after they fuck it up that the IE users are a HELL of a lot more likely to fall for the major social engineering scams from what I've seen. Windows has actually gotten pretty damned hard to crack so being smart little bastards the malware guys just figured out how to get the users to do the dirty work and the IE users? Easy prey.
From what I've seen the big three are, in no particular order, the "ZOMFG you got teh viruz! Run "Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_Cleaner" to kill it ZOMFG!" that has how you get your AV 20xx and Security tool variants, the "U want teh lezboz? We GOT teh lezboz! Just run "Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_Codek" to see all teh lezboz!" which is where many of the trojans and spambot crap comes from, and finally the "Hey U R on teh IM? I'm on teh IM to! Please check out "Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_cute pikz" to see me!" which is where a lot of the nasty rootkit and also spambot crap.
Funny part, second biggest cause of spam? firefox users that have yahoo accounts. The malware guys have figured out how to get Firefox to load an invisible iFrame that lets them load the Yahoo account and silently spam their address book while they look at "free porn" sites thanks to infected ads. This trick doesn't seem to work on the other browsers, not even IE, and it don't seem to work with hotmail nor Gmail, just Yahoo and FF.
I've found if you want to keep a PC clean a combination of Comodo Dragon or Chromium with ABP on Windows 7 with Avast Free works like magic. win 7 has sandboxing along with ASLR and DEP, Dragon and Chromium also sandbox and use low rights mode as does IE, and Avast Free (you can also use Comodo Security Suite which is free for business as well as home, but Avast is less fiddly) does scan before load on all web pages so any nasty crap on a page never gets loaded. Personally i prefer Dragon because of the Comodo secure DNS option, which doesn't mess with the system DNS and which is damned good at blocking phishing sites. Can't comment on Opera or Safari as i haven't really put them through the paces so i don't know how well they hold up.
But of all the systems that come through my shop it never fails that the IE users are the worst infected, bar none. be that because of TFA or because of flaws in the browser I can't tell you, hell it may just be PEBKAC, but if the user has IE only i know its gonna be a nasty mess.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Naturally, I am the "sysadmin" at my house (that is, my house with my partner and myself). I've got her set up with FF (running ABP and NoScript) in Win7 and Avast. She is more tech-savvy than the average "user" but I like to be on the safe side. Should I get her on to Chromium instead?
Just saying "Droid" (vs. "Android") is enough to start a flamewar in this unstable day and age. A "Slashdot Spring" if you will.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Has nobody posted this yet?
No sig today...
In my company we have all sorts of computer users, from multiple doctorates (not tech or science related, though) right to straight-out-of-school and temp workers (holidays). My experience is that intelligence or education has very little to do with the general ability to understand the computing environment, but age has a lot to do with it - the younger generations are (in general) simply more used to using computers, and thus more savvy.
It is an almost impossible task to explain the most basic things about safe passwords (which they get to choose, and often leave empty or make same as their name) to the BC (before computers) crowd, let alone why some other browser might be better than the stock one they have been using since they first switched on a computer, what a browser actually does, that there ARE different browsers, and that you can download and install various good ones for free.
Heck, just this morning I had to help Dr. So-and-so because she couldn't even type "pa$$w0rd" correctly in the little dotty box (yeah, I know, but it's a default on a third-party-system, which shall remain unnamed).
AC for obfuscation reasons.
...different browsers on different websites for a given platform. On my current XP box, I use Firefox, Safari (replaced Flock, which I used previously) and IE8 (9 is not supported). On my Linux laptop, I used Flock, Opera (for a while before it got screwed after an update became an upgrade, messing up the Opera system), Konqueror and Firefox. On my sister's laptop, I've used Chrome as well. Essentially, I use different browsers for different purposes altogether - Firefox/Chrome for things like e-mail, maps and such things, Safari/Chrome/Flock for YouTube and forums (although not this one), IE/Konq/Opera for websites related to OSs (as well as /.) Oh, and Firefox if I need to do things like check my router settings.
So how did I do, according to this study? I try out every browser I can get my hands on, and unless it's badly unusable, I typically mark a few websites that I'd browse using that browser.
Other places tend to have low sulpur in their crude oil simply because of when the stuff was laid down and what was or wasn't in the water at the time. The US ended up with a lot, but that's not a big deal once the infrastructure to keep it out of the fuel was built.
It's not IE users, it's users who don't change their default browser.
very interesting you say this. 'cuz in the recent past the spam from Yahoo! accounts (not actual spam accounts, but somehow spam sneaking in from regular user accounts) has become a really major issue. I can recollect at least 10 people in my friends / relatives that I received spam from. But from what I know, very few of them use FF. I suspect most of them use IE (I don't know for sure, but the general tendency).
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
The quoted article says "We do not claim that the results presented here are scientifically permissible." - lol, what a waste of bandwidth.
I do not see how you can judge people using internet explorer by this, it was only done on a small group.
I don't even use internet explorer, yet i still find this offensive...
I'll stay in my tank of Chromium under Linux.
> they had lower RQ scores and were grossly overconfident."
That does sound like creators of IE
Should I get her on to Chromium instead?
It is enough to get her stop using yahoo.
Posting, even though I will lose my mod priv. for this page (and i'd voted up a couple of good 'uns too!);
I have to say that is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent as well as funny posts I've seen on /. in a good while! I love the "U want teh lezboz? We GOT teh lezboz" line. I may be stealing that.
What I actually wanted to post though was that I don't think you can blame IE for this; it is merely a victim of MS's installed-first philosophy. In short, only the stupid users use IE, because it's already there for them. If they were more savvy, they'd already have installed FF/Safari/Chrome etc., so really when you see someone that only has IE, you're seeing someone that is incredibly unlikely to be computer-literate.
And that means they'll be paranoid about not breaking it, and so will easily all for all the scams. In addition, if they're guys, they'll probably fall for "teh lezboz" scams, since they'll probably not know about real porn, and where to find it, for free!
/ As an aside, we have moron's over here in the Mac world, but the mac just does a better job of protecting them, and the lower market-share means most malware is aimed at windows. I wonder how many mac-users that arechallengedhave "setup.exe" files in their ~/Downloads directory. Or for that matter, a whole shit ton of "OMG_teh_best_lezboz_EVA.exe" in there as well // Second fark-style slashy; it took me about 5 minutes of carefully 1-cursor-point-at-a-time editing of this post to get all those "teh" to actually stay that way, since OS X knows best, and corrects it EVERY FUCKING TIME!!!
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
Ouch, sounds like you are out in the real wild and woolly. Luckily, I have spent my IT career behind decent firewalls and clean loads of Windows. Corporate Symantec AV dont hurt along with Altiris Deployment Server for clean OS installs. I can agree with you about the IE users. If they don't even know that other browsers exist then they are probably not that savvy on the web. Not saying they are dumb, just blissfully ignorant. ;)
"Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_Rootkit" Click here dummy. Come on, click me, you know you want to.
The study went to collage campuses at around 10:00pm on Friday They pulled all the people partying, drinking, and smoking pot and other stuff what browser they used then they went to the computer science labs and pulled the students working in the lab.
Dewey Defeated Truman when the pollsters only pulled people in country clubs. The math was correct... The sample size was good, the problem was the sample wasn't random enough.
Or pull questions that can be used to direct people into answering the questions in a particular way."Do you believe that a mother has the right to kill her own baby?" or "Do you think the woman has the right to choose how to live their life?"
Am I the only one who is quite frustrated by the abuse of Math in modern society, where numbers and percentages are spat out without giving us the data to make recheck the decision ourselves and evaluate the data. I mean we have protests and people getting arrested and some hurt and killed over their particular summarized summary of the data. Those 99%ers vs the 53%ers. Where everyone thinks they are the majority because the numbers that have been manipulated shows them to be right.
Give us the raw data. Let us see and and peer check it ourselves see if we come with the same conclusion. I much rather be wrong and know the truth then think I am right and live a lie... But I may be the minority on that, I didn't collect any data on that.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
How does Risk Intelligence abbreviate to RQ?
Why? because i'm not joining the bandwagon and using Chrome? Again this is so BIAS,Chrome has a sandbox, are people more intelligent by using chrome? NO, most dont know what is the sandbox for and that it exist, second, it uses IE and cant work stand alone( LOSER), Firefox used to be great and i use it for the feature but it's been degrading as fast as they get the new versions out.
That's like saying that owning Apple product makes you more intelligent,,,,ouf!!!!
Behind the impressive web facade of "Projection Point" is former university lecturer Dylan Evans, who demonstrated staggering risk ignorance resulting in his suspension for sexually harassing a female colleague. Whatever the amusement he provides (e.g. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/96641), I doubt any so-called "research" originating from this pseudoscience is worth printing on real paper.
I do not believe that his anything to do with users' IQ.
I believe it has everything to do with this.
No, you're not the only one, but we're clearly the minority.
I think it has to do with conformity in general. If you've made a study which compared people listening to radio-friendly, readily available pop with other more open minded subjects who like to customise what they listen to, the pop group would most likely be dumber.
Ooh, ooh! Next, let's rank people from best to worst!
/ oblig xkcd
Are you saying that firefox actually takes memory away from a needy app?
Yes, namely the next app I'm going to start. Unlike classic Mac OS, modern operating systems have no well-known way to mark blocks of memory containing cached resources as "purgeable" (to drop when about to swap and to reload from cache next time it will be used) in case another application wants the memory. So instead, the cache gets swapped out to usually the same disk that the other application is trying to load itself from.
I think you're looking for this one: http://xkcd.com/451/
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
These are the same people I have at work that do not know what I am talking about when I ask them to open "the browser".
After a few tense moments they ell at me about why I do not just say open "the internet".
Fuck I hate my job.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
they had lower RQ scores and were grossly overconfident.
Sounds like your typical suit user.
Or what's an "Operating System"... do I need one? Is Internet Explorer our ISP? I can't make documents because I don't have MS Word...
It NEVER gets better. You get the odd person who while not a techie takes your advice and follows all of your suggestions - but they are just decoys to bash your hopes of an intelligent user base in the head until a green stuff that looks like guacamole comes out...
I don't want much, just LEARN to use the tool you have spent hundreds, if not thousands in some cases, to purchase and is "NEEDED" for your business... one wonders if they require others to fill their gas tanks; to wipe them; how do they still walk erect?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Funny part, second biggest cause of spam? firefox users that have yahoo accounts. The malware guys have figured out how to get Firefox to load an invisible iFrame that lets them load the Yahoo account and silently spam their address book while they look at "free porn" sites thanks to infected ads. This trick doesn't seem to work on the other browsers, not even IE, and it don't seem to work with hotmail nor Gmail, just Yahoo and FF.
What do you bet that all it takes is a POST to the correct URL and if they're logged in an e-mail is sent from their account...
Okay, still missing some way of getting the address book contacts. I'd have thought that cross-site scripting restrictions would prevent them doing that.
And hang it all, they should be using private browsing sessions to watch porn anyway.
The truest sign of a lack of intellect, still following and commenting on these stupid browser stories. I mean seriously who gives a shit what browser you use, and if you think it makes any difference I got a bridge in Arizona to sell you.
It's a browser which renders html, it doesn't make you cool, make you smart, make you pretty. It renders web pages, who gives ashit, do you still argue over the best calculator?
If she is using NoScript in a "medium" security manner -- meaning temporarily trust the parent domain of the site, but only whitelist external scripts (which means a fair amount of clicking "Temp allow akami / googleapis / disqus / some-image-service / etc") then that is MUCH better than Chome. Even NoScript in a "low" security method that temp-allows all scripts on a page but still blocks XSS, ClearClick, and anything else you choose like Java applets and iframes is still better than allowing all javascript and all plugins.
On the privacy front, try BetterPrivacy (never touch it after first time config) to flush all local Flash storage on browser start+stop. (You can of course whitelist LSOs from your bank or whatever.) Additionally, try CookieMonster in whitelist-only mode. It's just like NoScript, but for cookies so you can permanently allow all the sites she logs into, and temp allow any random page with a form.
Even just trying some extra plugins or stronger security settings will help everyone think more about security as they're learning more about security.
IQ = Intelligence Quotient
RQ = Risk Quotient
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
These numbers I have here shows that's a fact. Trust me.
Does "risk intelligence" have a strong correlation with general intelligence?
I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
All it proves is that their PC's are being used by people that don't bother with other browsers. IE is working and there's been no reason to explore alternatives. This conclusion is flawed (no dhuh) and senseless...move on. (I use Opera, FF and IE)
End of Line.
That would assume that they thought about it. They have not. a Windows user does not assume any real risk or threat. In fact, anybody on Windows is simply not bright enough to think things through.
Thankfully, they missed me. I guess all studies are flauwed to some degree.
I spoke with a local tech who cleaned viruses for people in our town. I told him that all you had to do for these people was install Firefox or something other than IE and tell people to use that for the internet. He just shook his head from side to side and said: "If I did that then they wouldn't come back next month."
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Yes, Chrome really is a much bigger memory hog than Firefox inside a VM - it was also a bigger memory hog than Firefox running native on Windows. I usually give the VM about 1GB of RAM, sometimes 1.5, and for reasons I don't understand, VMware usually uses a lot less than that - I've been assuming that Firefox's memory management must be better on Linux than on Windows. Meanwhile, I've got a similar number of tabs open in Chrome, and it's burning about 2GB of RAM. Firefox occasionally crashes (usually it's the Flash plugin rather than the browser) and often gets into confused-swapping for a few minutes, but it's still better.
The reason I'm using VMware isn't just for privacy, or for getting to run Linux on my IT-supported-Windows laptop. The big motivator for me was that the IT department changed their policy from "Firefox is unsupported" to "Firefox is Supported! This version only! No extensions or add-ons! Maybe we'll update it annually!", and running without Adblock and Noscript is too unsafe and unstable. And while Chrome is really nice when it's working, it isn't stable enough for the way I read news on news-aggregator sites (open a bunch of links as separate tabs, like today's articles from fark.com or BoingBoing. Watch Chrome crash most of the tabs!)
Maybe having a separate VM for Facebook is a bit paranoid, but I got really tired of reading the newspaper online and having the Facebook ad on the side of the page showing me "Here's what all of your Facebook Friends have been reading in the news today!" I could probably have implemented it as a separate Firefox profile, but a separate VM is clean and easy and guaranteed not to leak information all over.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Of course it is, and so is Swap Space, and when you've filled up your physical memory (4GB, in my case) and want to start something new or switch to an paged-out process, you have to wait for the disk to spin for a while paging out the least-used program so the new one can run. And it's not like browsers are the only bloatware I run on my system, there's also Microsoft Office and Adobe PDFs (and I frequently open PDF files that are bigger than 10MB, because they're vendor documentation for equipment I use.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The VMware is running Ubuntu, so it gets whatever Firefox and Flash versions Ubuntu uses (currently Ubuntu 11.04; I may eventually upgrade to 11.10.) Chrome is running on native XP, using whatever flash that gets, and unlike IE and Firefox, our Corporate IT folks prefer to have us running current Adobe software for security reasons so that's unlikely to be bad. The real problem is that Flash isn't a great product, and many many websites have bad Flash code on them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If Microsoft hypothetically bought out Mozilla and bundled Firefox instead of IE, you'd start seeing those numbers shift towards Firefox users. The real issue is simply that the people who are not as net-savvy (and thus possessing less knowledge about internet risks) tend to use the browser that is shipped with the OS. I would posit that the numbers would be somewhat different in areas where users are presented with a browser ballot.
They should do a similar study of only Mac users who use Safari. I would posit that the numbers would be higher with Safari than with Firefox or Chrome (albeit maybe not quite as high as with IE, due to market share). I realize they covered Safari, but they list no breakdown of OS, so it's possible that some of that includes users of Safari on Windows.
FC Closer
If it were me? Comodo Dragon with the secure DNS in the browser ONLY (which is the default setting) along with ABP. Dragon has checkboxes that will import ALL her FF settings, bookmarks, passwords, etc so that she won't really need to do much, and most importanly the combo of low rights mode (which Chromium has) and the browser only secure DNS (which Chromium don't) really shuts down any malware. This with the Avast and Win 7 you already have should make you solid as a rock.
Let me put it THIS way HopefulIntern, I took a machine i was gonna wipe anyway and using the above method I TRIED to infect the machine. I went to every "hott titty teen lesbos!" topsite and clicked on EVERY link, just went nuts, and between Comodo and Avast i ended up with ZERO infections. Most sites were blocked by Dragon thanks to their secure DNS and the few that hadn't made it to their DNS DB got shut down by Avast, and low rights mode means that even IF they were to manage to get past both, which as i said i couldn't get a single bug past both, then thanks to dragon being in low rights mode there isn't any system folders or files it can get to.
as someone who has to deal with users 6 days a week i pretty much HAVE to keep up with every angle of attack because these businesses and home users are counting on me and my rep is on the line. With the above i have yet to have to fix a single box from malware getting past the defenses. for those users that listened to me and switched to Dragon plus Avast on Win 7 the ONLY thing i have to do for them now is hardware work, installing new cameras or upgrading memory and the like. Some weeks I feel like the Maytag repairman because i did my job a little TOO good, but the referrals from happy customers makes up for it and ultimately its the user that counts in my book. An uninfected computer is a happy computer, follow the above and bugs will be something that happens to the OTHER guy, not to you.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
In other news, bear shits in woods.
Yeah, I hear that.
One of my fiancé's (she went back to college to retrain as a graphics artist) classmates is a lovely woman, same age range as my other half, mid thirties. Not stupid by any means, intelligent enough, really amazing painter. Doesn't know what a web-browser is. Or why IE is a bad one. Or that there are other ones out there.
Once you tell her it a couple of times, and explain it in a way she can understand, she's fine, but no-one has done that for a lot of things we take for granted as "basic", so when we move on to more advanced topics, she has no frame of reference to base it on, and cannot understand.
The key in these situations is to determine if the person is either stupid, or uneducated. If they are merely uneducated, they can be taught, as long as you do so in a manner they can relate to.
If they're stupid, give up, life's too short.
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
I always just ask them if their mechanic asks them to try to start the the highway when they bring their car in to have it looked at.
"I've found if you want to keep a PC clean a combination of Comodo Dragon or Chromium with ABP on Windows 7 with Avast Free works like magic."
;)
I just pay for my porn. With the money I save not have to by AV...I can buy more porn
There's a low risk they have intelligence...
Thank you very much :)
Thanks :) IIRC NoScript on her machine is pretty unforgiving as I recall, but I will look into exactly what it is set to. I will take a look at the other plugins you mention, thanks for your help :)
My sister-in-law has sent their computer to me five times with viruses. I give them all the typical talks, install firefox/chromium, remove IE links etc. But it's their kids seem to always fall for the social engineering tricks. About a month ago, she asked me is there anything they can do? I asked exactly what do they use their computer for, most importantly, do they watch Netflix and do they use any windows specific software? When the answer was no I switched them to linuxMint.
So far they love how fast it is. I stifled a laugh, linuxMint is a beached whale compared to something like Puppy! Of coarse, as most of us know, Linux works very well but if something goes wrong it's often more difficult to fix. Hence, it's not a perfect solution so I welcome others ideas on how to protect a computer from children?
Well they may have figured out how to do that trick with certain versions of IE as well, but when i tried it with IE8 along with Opera, QTWeb, Dragon, and Firefox all hitting the same sites and watching a throwaway yahoo email account i populated with a few of my spam addresses ONLY Firefox was consistently hit. IIRC I didn't get a single one on the others, only FF.
You'd think they would have someone issuing a workaround because it HAS to be driving folks nuts. I found out about from complaints from FF using customers that were getting yelled at by family for spamming when all my scans showed ZERO bugs. BTW you do NOT have to be logged into yahoo for this to work, ONLY have a yahoo account with the password saved by FF. Somehow they are getting FF to load an iFrame that logs into FF and then spams the email addresses.
If you want to see how bad it is without risking any spam here is an easy test: Just put a password on your FF password access, then go to some of the mainstream porn sites like Redtube and Youporn and see how often FF pops up the box wanting your password. You'll find that page after page will pop that box up in your face, which means ads on that page is calling for the password. BTW I found it also works DESPITE having ABP, as apparently the code is loading before ABP kicks in, but it is stopped by NoScript but only if you have NoScript at its most aggressive which is a PITA.
But the others were fine so if I was you I'd just send them a link to Comodo Dragon and talk up how fast it is. I've found switching users works easier with a carrot than a stick and Dragon is faster than FF and IE when it comes to page load.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I am on a PC I am about to rewipe. Out of coursity I did what you said and did a bing search (because Google is better at filtering malware) lesbo titties. After three sites sure enough I click on a video and it was a *.mpg.exe file. Avast did not pick it up. I then downloaded and still. I even scanned it and said the file was ok.
I know better than to open it so I got a kick out of this. But MSE would have banned that just because of the obvious and very old .mpg.exe trick is IE 6/XP era and a decade old that I would assume even Windows 7 should theoritically refuse to run.
I am thinking there are better free anti virus options
http://saveie6.com/
IF you were on XP that explains it as XP doesn't really HAVE a low rights mode which kinda hamstrings most AV. But with Comodo PLUS Avast PLUS ABP and Win 7 I haven't found a single site that I could get past the filters. Do you have the link? It'll be a few hours until I can run it because &^(*%&^%*(&% Windows 7 is gonna end up needing reinstalled thank to my having to yank my damned board to put this new Thuban chip in and all I had lying around was an Nvidia board.
Protip: Nvidia boards FUCKING SUCK and don't even support AHCI and Windows 7 DOES NOT LIKE switching between ATI and Nvidia boards apparently. My XP partition will boot, although its hopelessly crippled because the change has somehow killed its ability to make temp folders so I can't install the drivers for the new board, and Win 7 gets about 3/4ths of the way before BSOD 0x00007b which is AHCI. Hell the bitch won't even load in safe mode....FUCK!
Here is a valuable lesson Billy I learned the hard way...if a chip isn't released BEFORE the board? Don't fucking bother, it doesn't matter if their damned website says its supported or not, they are full of shit. If I can't get her to boot off this PCI to SATA card I'm about to pop in 3 years worth of work is gonna go down the shitter. Sure I have all my data on a different drive but do you have ANY idea how many programs a 3 year old Windows 7 install has? Man if I would have known this I would have just stayed with the quad. But it'll cost more to send back and I don't have time to wait on a replacement quad so I must soldier on.
BTW MSE ONLY catches by scan on dload it does NOT do scan before display which means that any drivebys work just fine under MSE, i've seen it with my own eyes. Its NOT an AV BTW, its just Giant Antispy bought and rebranded by MSFT.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Honestly? I haven't quite figured out the HOW of it, only that it starts with an invisible iFrame, and that it only seems to work on Yahoo+FF. BTW you do NOT have to be logged into the account for it to work, it'll get your pword from FF and load it up in the iFrame.
I know this because after getting complaints from users (and getting a few of their spams even though I had checked and their machines were clean) so I set up a dummy Yahoo mail account, made sure that was the ONLY account in a clean FF install, and then loaded a few of my spam dump email accounts into the mail account and watching the accounts on another box with a KVM switch. I found that it didn't matter whether you were logged in, didn't matter if you had ABP but NoScript did seem to stop them but only when it was set to most aggressive which makes web pages into static pages.
If you are a web coder or white hat please figure this out because i know if I better understood the machanism they are using I could better design defense. But I'm not a coder or a security guy, just a humble fixit guy, so all I can do is report on what I've found. In my little informal test I used Chromium, Dragon, Opera, QTWeb, and IE 8 and ONLY FF had spam coming to my spam dump, only one. So obviously they have figured out how to do XSS on FF without triggering the alarm, its the how i have no clue about.
But if you want to see how bad it is load up FF in a sandbox or VM so you don't have to worry about malware and put a password lock on the password account and start surfing the porn sites like Youtube and Redporn and see how often the password lock pops up wanting your password. i found that on some pages as many as NINE password lock dialog boxes would come up!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I don't feel like stumbling through pornsites looking for exploits, but I think these AdBlock Plus filters should prevent any such attacks. Let me know if you try verifying this.
||mail.yahoo.com^$third-party,domain=~yahoo.net
||mail.yahoo.net^$third-party,domain=~yahoo.com
||mail.yimg.com^$third-party,domain=~yahoo.com|~yahoo.net
||msg.yahoo.com^$third-party
This IE user bashing is complete nonsense.
We have overconfidence and low RQ because IE is one of the safest browsers out there and we dont need to worry about security
Source: slashdot
Cool, thanks. will probably try it out next week when the off leases I've been waiting on show up, but since I've just spent the last 3 days with my main rig in pieces (ECS is a lying bunch of assholes BTW do NOT believe their CPU lists!) and now that I FINALLY have a board (Asrock, quite nice) that took my Thuban like a champ needless to say I do NOT want to see another gutted box ATM.
Bad enough I still have to finish my GF's prezzie on Sunday, so until the offleases show up there will be NO experimenting of jack shit, just quiet happy smiles as i enjoy my nice silent box cranking out video transcodes with V6 power of creamy goodnesss. Sometimes you just have to kick back and enjoy the little things, ya know? Mmmmm, six cores.
BTW if you or any of your family are on AMD just FYI but they announced Dec 5th they are killing production of ALL socket AM3s, including the Deneb and Thuban, so if there is a socket AM3 you or yours have been drooling over NOW is the time. After the announcement I had to go to three different eTailers before i could find a 95w Thuban, those suckers sold out quick! Got to say its worth it though, had it slamming making an AVI to DVD-DL for the last 30 minutes and its already nearly finished and barely 87f thanks to the coolermaster. Gotta love that 6 core power!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.