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."

Comments

No big surprise if you look at normal people

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Quite possibly, the most useful study EVER

[mcrbids]

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.

Re:Not fair.

[jrumney]

Most of your Window users are technologically illiterate. IE is there it works why fart around with it.

Yes, but ... I'd have expected the opposite result myself - technologically illiterate people who are risk adverse would be more likely to not try installing third party software on their PCs. Overconfident types would install every browser from everywhere without consideration for where it came from and what trojans it might harbour.

Of course, it could be that this study is just as much of a hoax as the original.

Why I use IE7 instead of Firefox and Chrome

[billstewart]

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?

Re:Salt in the wound?

[RoLi]

Well, Microsoft said they had "no obligation to return data" to their customers.

You have to be both grossly overconfident and very naive to do business with that company.

And to all MS-apologists: No, it is not the case that "everybody does this". Most companies do provide guarantees to their customers, especially when it comes about handling data. What is the point of storing something in "the cloud" when the company boldly tells you that they have "no obligation" to even give you the data back? Of course there are some things where MS cannot be avoided, but it is your choice to minimize or maximize your exposure.

So when MS screws you over, don't complain. Also I just don't get the philosophy to shut down all servers when some deadline runs out - it would cost MS practically zero to just keep the servers running - but no, they must turn everything off to inflict maximum pain for their (hopefully ex-) customers.

Re:Please no...

[hairyfeet]

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.

Re:Please no...

[Wizard Drongo]

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!!!