The BBC, amongst many other sources, reports that three new security holes have been found in Internet Explorer. For those of you out there surfing using IE, here is my strongest recommendation: Get Firefox!*

On top of the security benefits Firefox is faster, and comes with a bunch of features that really improve one’s browsing experience such as tabs and Livebookmarks for RSS sources.

Mozilla [Firefox] has bugs to (sic). Lots of them. The difference, however is the time it takes to patch them.
…This vulnerability is the perfect example: MS was notified about this on 13/02/2006, 40 days ago. They had all the opportunity to fix it in this month’s security patch, but thy did not. So the patch will come no earlier than 2 months after discovery – that’s a huge window of exposure. (Stellian commenting on Slashdot)

Microsoft obviously doesn’t think that the two holes allowing full-hijacking of a computer are serious enough to deviate from their regular second-Tuesday-of-every-month patch release, saying that they would only consider releasing earlier if the “threat grew significantly”.

and I love this typically useless piece of advice:

To avoid falling victim, Microsoft urged users to avoid websites they did not trust … (BBC Article)

I think if we want to seriously comply with Microsoft’s suggestion, we might as well unplug our broadband now. How about this little nugget of wisdom: Avoid using browsers you do not trust.

* I realise that some of you may be forced by company policy to use IE, and in this case I would urge you to bring up the intelligence of such a policy with whoever is responsible. Why waste workers’ time and their computer processor power on the plethora of spyware, adware and malware that typically accompanies Internet Explorer use?