You know, I've used Opera for quite some time now, and I never had something sneak in, despite the latest incarnation at the time of the test scored 0%...

The most security you'll ever get is by being cautious instead of relying on some neat tricks a browser has got up his sleeve.

When I still used IE I didn't have any noteworthy security problems, now I switched over to FF I haven't got any either. So when it's purely about security, I can't say much useful.

I do know though that my FF starts up about 10x as fast, and loads pages 2x as fast as IE. That alone (especially the start up time) is enough for me to keep FF.

As long as IE uses active X (does it?), it's a really bad idea that completely needs to be rethought.

LOL:DL
Benchmarks... Even *I* could make a processor faster than your average one, if I just devised the right benchmark:DL

Android is also from google if you think Chrome is bad because it came from Google. :D

Google bastardization works like charm on anything they touch including youtube. :shifty:

IE needs to have active X limited, and Java switched off, and like with all MS products certain automatic features and auto updates need to be deactivated, then it is pretty safe, me thinks, as long as you are not targetted individually by a hacker who launches a manual attack on your system. But in that case you probably are in troubles anyway, no matter your standard browser.

I have come to use only an antivirus and a firewall over the past year. Spybot and A-squared and whatever scanners I additionally used, simply did not cause any alarms anymore since long. Spybot and Avira also do not like each other, it seems.

All I can say is that a security-tailored Firefox always gave me more problems than a security-tailored IE. Not to mention that it sometimes ate up to 40% of my system ressources, in spikes even more and right down to system freezes. That is hilarious, even for an old but not slow system like mine (P4 3 GHz, 2 GB RAM, WinXP). Firefox also needs much more time being invested in a period of time, in order to stay with the updates and changes with the applets, at least with the versions I tried until last year. I am not the thing's constant servant - the thing has to serve me. The way MS handles updates is far more comfortable. Switch off auto-update, but manually run Windows Update every second Tuesday, and you're done.

The best safety mechanism to be used - is right between your ears.

At my rig it's exactly the other way around. IE always causes performance problems, firefox doesn't.

I just get a popup window saying "there's a new version of FF, do you want to install it?" with a yes and a no button. If I choose yes, it installs itself and often automatically restarts, restoring the tabs I still had open.

Roger that:up:

Ok, well since i have time, I might as well test the different browsers myself

ill try this:https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon...metasploit.pdf

the "browser_autopwn" to simulate you average half-assed attacker
I will use it to attack my old laptop in Windows XP running different browsers

I'll post the results here tomorrow

My experience with IE are not good, just too many system infections I got from it due IE's exploits and holes in its security.

currently using Firefox with the noscript addon.

and for saying one browser is superior in their security to another is just hogwash.
All have their security flaws, just pick the one you feel most comfortable and secure with.

HunterICX

In some ways there can never be a winner in the browser war, the playing fields will never be matched such that a completely fair test could be conducted. Firefox has a massive developer community to add additional plugins of all types and more people always actively working on it as a result. Microsoft has no such community from which extra resources are pooled from and can pull from when needed. While MS may indeed produce a superior security wise browser it has very little room for modification; FF can be made to be as secure or more than MS through its developer network.

If you want to make straight out of the box comparisons it should be clearly noted as such, that only an unmodified/no plugin version of the browser was used. When you start trying to make broader statements about which is better overall too many external factors fog up the picture to skew any results, statistics can be worked to make almost claim true. In my stats class as an undergrad our professor used a real life example of data he found from a home pregnancy test that claimed to be 99.5% accurate. From the pure raw data the actual real accuracy was less than 70%, with careful manipulation of the numbers through legitimate math he was able to transfer the number such that the 70% product was 99% effective...