For high-severity vulnerabilities, the product Windows XP earns the dubious distinction of the No.1 spot. "What's also interesting here is that of the top four browsers that have a total of 90 percent of the browser market share, Firefox has the most vulnerabilities in every category, followed by Chrome, then Internet Explorer and finally Safari," the report concludes.
I would have given that accolade to something like safari…Admittedly firefox needs some improvements in security but i would not say it were the most insecure…If that were seriously the case then why such a high user base.
Probably because of extensions, I doubt they would have gotten that many users if it didn’t have extensions… perhaps they are called add-ons with firefox, can’t remember.
I also doubt Google Chrome would have gotten that many user if it didn’t have extensions.
Theres an argument here that IE users are more likely to get infected as they are also more likely to be running “other” possibly generic AV’s and use default settings everywhere.
Whereas someone who will install a new browser will also more likely install and upgrade there other software and add add ons/extensions to improve there browser security and privacy. In fact be generally more security aware.
Yes sadly that would be true as IE is shipped and embedded in windows.Problem being is that microsoft have programmed IE in such a way that it needs to be installed from the factory.
If they were to give a choice of installing IE or not i feel microsoft would be worried about losing many users as they would tend to choose other alternatives.
Yes they do. IE still has the biggest share. I have tried them all and none have lasted more than an hour before I go back to IE. The one I like the best of the alternatives is Opera and Firefox comes in last.
If we are not sure, why not post a poll asking who uses internet explorer asking if they use IE still aswell as asking if they have friends who use if.
A poll taken among people using what is still very much a niche player in the security field would hardly be representative of overall usage of any piece of software. It would be meaningless but I can say that I and everyone in my family do use IE.
I agree however I think it would be interesting to see the percentages for IE, FF, Chrome and Opera here on the forums, just to get an idea of what people on here uses.
There are also issues such as privacy, transparency, customisability and Mozilla don’t ram their product down your throat via secondary installs.
With regard to the original report, it’s only based on the NVD database and that’s not exactly the be all and end all of browser security research, in fact:
I didn’t mean that everyone uses extensions, I just meant that I think it wouldn’t have THAT many users if it wasn’t for extensions. The only reason I changed from IE to FireFox was the extensions, I then changed from firefox to Chrome for extensions and it’s faster… I’m now thinking about going back to IE, but I would miss my extensions. =(
I think you need to define ‘novice’. I would imagine the majority of people using the Internet for the first time, will use whatever the OS offers. That could be IE, Chrome, firefox or safari depending on the OS.
The question really should be about which browser people really chosen to use, as opposed to having something like chrome installed, because you installed an antivirus product, and it consequently became your default browser.
Anyway, do a search on browser polls and results, I’m sure there are loads.