Which Is Safer: Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2.0?
14th Nov 2006, 18:56 GMT
On the Wild Wild Web, where scams, fraud, and identity theft are commonplace, which browser protects you more effectively? Is it Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 or Mozilla's Firefox 2.0? According to a new report from software testing firm SmartWare -- a report commissioned by Mozilla -- the answer is Firefox, at least when it comes to protection against phishing scams. Phishing is the practice of directing Web surfers to fake Web sites that prompt them to reveal personal data, such as social security numbers. The fraudulent sites almost always steal the designs and logos of well-known, trusted companies, such as eBay and CitiGroup, to dupe users into divulging their data. Phighting Phishing Both IE7 and Firefox have built-in antiphishing features designed to alert you when you've hit a fraudulent site. With Microsoft's browser, antiphishing is turned on by default. Each Web site you visit is checked against a database maintained by Microsoft, and known frauds are blocked. Firefox has two antiphishing options. With the first, the sites you visit are checked against a local database on your computer. With the second, the sites you visit are checked against a live database maintained by Google. In the SmartWare test, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 blocked 690 known phishing sites, or 66.35 percent of the total. In contrast, Firefox blocked 78.85 percent when using a local antiphishing database and 81.54 percent when using the online database. Experts Weigh In Advantage Firefox? Perhaps. "Historically, Firefox has had superior security," said Patrick Peterson of security firm IronPort. "However, Microsoft has been working very hard on IE7, which shows great promise in closing this gap." Peterson added that Microsoft's new work could be "a great leap forward," but that it's still too soon to tell which browser will claim the title of being the safest. "It is true that we see Firefox users infected less...
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