MatthewHSE - 11:45 am on Oct 4, 2005 (gmt 0)

I have to agree with this, I have been using IE most of my internet life and have to say I have *never* run into problems. The basics of safe browsing is general knowledge IMHO - don't go on dodgy looking sites, don't click that dodgy looking link and don't enter you personal info all over the place.

How do you know what's "dodgy" until you've already clicked it? ;) I'm no Internet newbie, but just recently I wound up on a "dodgy" site without any previous notion that there might be anything wrong - and I'm very careful when going around unfamiliar Internet territory. Granted, that doesn't happen often, but all it takes is once.

I also here people screaming about spyware etc with IE, but again the basics - get a spyware checker, keep up-to date with virus software and clear unwanted cookies \ files.

With Firefox, you can forget about most of those things - or, at the very least, you can forget the spyware checker. Also, Firefox includes a cookie manager, which allows you to delete only certain cookies. IE's only option is to delete ALL cookies, unless you do it manually in Windows Explorer, and I consider that pretty awkward.

But you're still essentially right - safe browsing habits will keep you pretty safe if you use IE. But I'd rather not take the chance - besides, Firefox has boosted my productivity so much that I couldn't go back now even if I wanted to!

On another note, I think IE on XP is quite a bit more secure than IE on previous versions of Windows. At least a couple of the security features you mentioned aren't available in my copy of IE (running W2K). I know XP is the norm these days, but there are still a lot of people running 98, 2000, and ME. None of them will have some of those essential security features, such as ActiveX installation warnings.