While Microsoft talks a good game regarding caring about your privacy, their products speak differently. Most of you know that Internet Explorer is the most often attacked Web browser, hence the seemingly endless patches for it. And I know a lot of you have grown up (on the Internet) with it, but maybe the time has come you really consider learning to use a different browser — or at least until Microsoft does more than talk about your security.
If you use Internet Explorer there is no way of telling when you’re connected to a secure server (https:// ) if your connection with that server is really secure of whether your ISP or some government agency, or some criminal is interloping. While the chance are somewhat slim so out-of-the-blue criminal will happen upon you, or that the NSA will be spying on you, your ISP may be — you wouldn’t know unless you were using Chrome or Firefox — it’s easy to fool I.E.
Read this from the respected and renowned GRC web site about Extended Validation certificates:
‘”…In Firefox and Chrome, only 100% authentic Extended Validation(EV) certificates will display the extra “Green” indication!
“This www.GRC.com web site always uses Extended Validation (EV) certificates. So if you are viewing this EV site through a properly-designed web browser, such as Firefox or Chrome (but not Internet Explorer, since Microsoft deliberately allows EV indications to be forged) and you DO see the special EV treatment in the address bar, then you KNOW your connection to US is NOT being intercepted (and also that this page’s contents have not been altered!) But if the special EV indication is NOT being displayed . . . then you instantly know that something IS intercepting and spoofing this web site’s certificate!
Or to put it another way: If you are using Firefox or Chrome somewhere that never shows any EV certificates, then you ARE using a connection that is being intercepted, and your web browser is being presented with deliberately fraudulent certificates . . . since EV certificates cannot be spoofed!
Note that because extended validation certificates are completely spoof-proof (under Firefox and Chrome) we show the true EV status for every fingerprinted site. This allows you to determine whether any site you select should be showing as EV in your Firefox or Chrome browser….”
We just wanted to make you aware of this and to give you a special heads up. If you want to read more about this please see https://www.grc.com/fingerprints.htm
Wow is that link an interesting read. It’s gonna take a couple more readings to get it through my head, though.
Thanks for the heads up, TC. Makes part of me want to go back to snailmail for everything that’s not frivolous. At least the postal service still investigates thoroughly and punishes appropriately for tampering, theft, and fraud.
Does EB still use IE?
EB is still a Microsoft believer — she lives in the past. But every day I see her love affair with Microsoft end a little more. I used to be like her — and I still appreciate that Microsoft brought the PC to the average users. Low-cost computers are never Apple — Microsoft made it possible for the less fortunate among us to be able to buy a PC.
But Microsoft, like General Motors, let their success blind them to the ones who made them successful — the consumers. And GM had to learn a lesson by teetering on the edge of bankruptcy – and the lesson they learned was to give people what they want – not what the corporation wants them to have.
Microsoft seems to be awakening — they finally acknowledge that Windows 8 and 8.1 are flops. Windows 8.2 is coming and it will give people what they’ve been asking for. A good sign.
But IE continues to be the world’s most insecure browser –and the world’s most annoying to use (my opinion). With its stupid smart screen filter and other clunky features, I simply choose not to use it except for testing pages in it to make sure they render correctly.
Microsoft had 98% of the browser market just a few years ago…now they barely have more than 50% — and it comes pre-installed on Windows computers — so it has a huge advantage there. Still only 52% of Windows users use IE as their default browser – and of that 52%, most of them use it because they have never tried another browser.
But to answer your question — EB uses IE, but she’s using Chrome more and more frequently.