BBC: Internet Explorer Security Alert

Ouch!

Users of the world’s most common web browser have been advised to switch to another browser until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people’s computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

So, apart from being a crap browser at actually rendering web pages according to the standards, it also opens up your computer to a “serious security flaw” (as if we didn’t know that already).

Here’s my recommendation for curing this ailment. Permanently:

  1. Get Firefox for your Windows computer right now!
  2. Get Thunderbird for your Windows computer today and get away from Outlook/Outlook Express.
  3. Get OpenOffice.org for your Windows computer and marvel at the free office application suite and ponder why you have been paying so much for M$’s bloatware in the past.
  4. Then, once happy with the above, Get Ubuntu (which has all of these wonderful applications and much more)and then get rid of that malware masquerading as an operating system called Windows.
  5. Enjoy trouble-free Free computing for evermore.

Simple.

Thanks to oly on the #ubuntu-uk irc channel for pointing this story out.

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7 Comments

  • Bad news for all doze Explorer lovers if there any :d

  • jimcooncat says:

    Would love to be able to just give them one link to one download. Andlinux.org has a great start on the right idea, but it would need a chunk more of the old Ubuntu love to be a real solution for migrating Windows users:

    1. Import Wizards for Thunderbird and FF bookmarks from the Windows apps.
    2. A lot of file system fixes that would make it simple for the Ubuntu apps to help users make the transition from drive letters (C:\) to FHS(/home).
    3. Dedicated, automatic IRC channel for migration help. I know you’ll all be there 🙂
    4. Post-weaning script to move system completely to dedicated Ubuntu hard drive partitions.

    While it’s hard for some of us old timers to imagine, the normal Windows users need that much more handholding, and those at work that have the go-ahead to migrate can’t ditch all their Windows apps so quickly, or take a lot of time doing migration work. This wouldn’t be a small project, yet it would go far to reduce the numbers impacted by Bug #1.

  • Martyn says:

    We have a problem here at work as many of our customers insist we use intranet based systems for technical and commercial interaction which only work with IE. I’ve been complaining to them about this for at least two years with little or no success.

    This includes our bank – their internet based system is borked on anything other than IE.

    I fired off a load of emails (again) yesterday but don’t hold out much hope of change in the short term.

    • Alan Lord says:

      Hi Martyn,

      This gets my goat too. Our bank, HSBC, used to be IE only but for some time now it has been fine with FF on Linux. My biggest gripe is with ParcelForce. I can’t do any consignment shipping in anything other than IE. I have written to them several times and not even had the courtesy of a reply…

      In a funny way though, IE is good for me. I do quite a lot of work (especially on Joomla!) for web/graphic design houses to make their sites work properly in it! Especially IE6; that really is a terrible browser.

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