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2009.11.14

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Can you please provide hard facts to back up the "most secure" label you are giving IE8, as you did for the usage statistics. Providing a source would be very comforting too. These two things would do a lot to back up your post.

I find it hard to believe that out-of-the-box, IE is more secure. Perhaps, by default, it has more anti-phishing, but there's a lot more to security than that. I've also read reports that the anti-phishing has not worked properly

For example, I'm forever removing malware off my dad's PC and he usese IE8. I bet there are many more exploits than for the other browsers, and they take longer to get fixed, and I'd be willing to wager that they are more severe (more execution of code locally, for example).

Many people used to use toolbars to improve their security (E.g. the one from netcraft), but nowadays a modern browser (FF, IE8, Opera) will include this functionality. And Microsoft's monthly roll-out of patches on "Patch Tuesday" means that you may be vulnerable for weeks - Firefox can patch in less than 24 hours!

Your quoting of the w3schools browser usage stats is without context and is misleading.

The w3schools website makes it clear that their browser usage stats are based on hits on the w3schools website -- and the demographic of people visiting that site is not representative of the whole of internet usage.

Sadly, IE is still the most popular browser by a comfortable margin. My evidence? Well, you provide it yourself. The w3schools page you link to states, "the browser figures above are not 100% realistic. Other web sites have statistics showing that Internet Explorer is used by at least 80% of the users".

Also...
If you want to be taken seriously, you should ask yourself this: do authors deserve respect if they write articles from a biased viewpoint and if their claims are backed up by no evidence or misleading evidence?

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