July 2, 2004 - Picking up from the June 26th column...
Due to the numerous risks of using Internet Exploiter (not a typo) SANS has suggested that people use an alternate web browser. Over 90% of web surfers use IE and some seem to think that these exploits happen simply because of IE's omnipresence. For example, they say if Opera had 90% of the market it would be targeted and its flaws exposed too. However, anyone ever notice that when Netscape had 90% (c. 1997) of the browser market we didn't have all these security risks just from surfing the Web? I've never used IE, that piece of garbage, even when I had dialup - meaning if I needed a new copy I had to download the 22 MB or so which took about an hour. I always used Netscape and now I use Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera. All you IE users give one of them a try. You could try Netscape 7.1 too; it's close to Mozilla.