Is Firefox a safer browser?

[Blade]

That is: safer and better in every aspect than Internet Explorer?

Some swear by Firefox's features, performance, ease of use, better control over font size than IE and whatnot while others say it has several security flaws, some HTML features are MIA, URL's are not automatically parsed into links, Active X is missing and whatnot.

What's the deal?

 

[tiburon]

Yes Firefox is safer and better in every aspect than IE. IE really is shit no two ways about it.

Having said that tho. yes Firefox does have SOME security flaws but if you own a Windows based operating system and run a browser on it to access the net your always going to have SOME security flaws.

I haven't had any problems with Firefox as of yet but I know people who have got trojans via browsing with it and such but in reality that's just inevitable.

Your best bet with Windows is don't use IE, use Fox or Opera (and fox is safer & i think better than Opera) and then buy or download a decent Virus scanner and a firewall but if you really don't want any problems at all buy a mac or use Linux.


http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5 :arrow: the BEST free virus scanner. Does just as well as the majority of commercial ones people buy and has free updates.

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp?lid=staticcomp_za :arrow: best free firewall around. May be best to upgrade to Pro. but it shouldn't really matter too much.

 

[Mr Angry]

:lol:
Your browser as always is as safe as the OS that it is loaded on.

 

[Razor]

It's much safer than IE

Firefox has NO HTML features missing. However Internet Explorer DOES have some HTML features missing.

Firefox doesn't have ActiveX, but hardly any sites use ActiveX now.

Firefox sticks by the standards completely. It has no extras, and nothing has been removed.

Internet Explorer does not stick by the standards. They've added more, and taken some out.

 

[Knights_fan13]

also firefox does not have pop up windows, also doesn't have spyware or anything like that.

IE does

 

[terracesider]

If you're worried about security, grc is a good place to start identifying potential problems on your machine.

http://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2

Then follow Tiburon's advice.

As far as I can work out, the main difference between free and pro versions is that more functions are automated in pro to make life easier for systems administators.

 

[Blade]

Found a good, and recnt, article here about the pros and cons of Firefox.

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.html?articleID=160900911

 

[OVP]

Yes Firefox is safer and better in every aspect than IE. IE really is sh*t no two ways about it.

Having said that tho. yes Firefox does have SOME security flaws but if you own a Windows based operating system and run a browser on it to access the net your always going to have SOME security flaws.

I haven't had any problems with Firefox as of yet but I know people who have got trojans via browsing with it and such but in reality that's just inevitable.

Your best bet with Windows is don't use IE, use Fox or Opera (and fox is safer & i think better than Opera) and then buy or download a decent Virus scanner and a firewall but if you really don't want any problems at all buy a mac or use Linux.


http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5 :arrow: the BEST free virus scanner. Does just as well as the majority of commercial ones people buy and has free updates.

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp?lid=staticcomp_za :arrow: best free firewall around. May be best to upgrade to Pro. but it shouldn't really matter too much.

Great advice Tiburon

I use all 3 of these (except i have the pro version of zonealarm) and ive never had a problem since ive been using them. Of course you can still get some trojans via Firefox, but AVG picks them up all the time. I used to use Nortons Antivirus a few years back, but when the 1 year time ran out, i downloaded AVG's free virus scanner and it picked up heaps of virii that Nortons did not. Plus Norton's crashes your system alot more as its a system hog.

 

[groggo]

as ovp has already said nortons is scum and will crash your pc not save it and you pay for the waste of space

firefox rocks ie explorer is hacker /spyware & virus clambake

:thumnn

 

[shadow grinder]

i love tabed browsing, much easier then opening a new window every time.

 

[Thunderstruck]

ActiveX support has been deliberately left out of Firefox by Mozilla because it's apparently one of the main reasons IE is vulnerable to attacks.