{"id":964,"date":"2007-11-04T15:51:10","date_gmt":"2007-11-04T20:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2007\/11\/04\/just-get-firefox-already-geez\/"},"modified":"2012-01-28T17:07:40","modified_gmt":"2012-01-28T22:07:40","slug":"just-get-firefox-already-geez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2007\/11\/04\/just-get-firefox-already-geez\/","title":{"rendered":"Just get Firefox already, geez!"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are visiting this site with Internet Explorer 6 or 7, you will probably notice a large orange banner at the top that didn’t used to be there before, suggesting that you upgrade to Firefox<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Don’t be alarmed – this is deliberate.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen it happen, time and time again. You’ve probably read about it in the news or heard about it on TV – you almost can’t escape it these days. Of course I’m talking about viruses<\/a>, trojans<\/a>, worms<\/a>, botnets<\/a>, spyware<\/a>, spam<\/a>, and identity fraud<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a statistically significant portion of cases where people get these sorts of things, it is because they use Internet Explorer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is possible to get your computer infected by just reading an email (with a client that renders the email via IE) or by just visiting a web page. You don’t even have to click “Yes” to download anything in some cases. And although Microsoft has taken steps lately to improve the security of IE (IE 7 is much safer than IE 6), it is still much, much more vulnerable than Firefox.<\/p>\n

So why take the risk? It only takes a few minutes to install Firefox<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, granted, some cases are due to user error – after all, the fake emails & fake websites that entice you to enter your password or bank number or whatever are getting better looking & more sophisticated every day – but using IE is like shaving with a straight razor – sure, it gets the job done, but if you mess up just a little bit – you’re dead<\/em>! Firefox<\/a>, on the other hand, is like a nice electric razor with the skin-softening gel. You won’t slice your jugular open and it even soothes away the minor irritation of an every-day activity!<\/p>\n

I see news reports about things like the Storm worm<\/a> and I just think of all those poor people, unwittingly taking part of botnet-type activities – DDOS, spam generation, and so forth.<\/p>\n

In this day and age – with all these threats – with so many people getting their computers completely hosed<\/em> on almost a monthly basis – and with so much of our lives (photos, emails, banking info) on our computers, there is just no reason to keep using a browser that is so potentially dangerous. Especially when the safer alternative is both free, easy-to-use, and available right now<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So stop procrastinating. Unless you enjoy<\/em> living dangerously, just get Firefox<\/a> already, Okay? You’ll be glad you did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My attempts to urge Internet Explorer users to upgrade to something better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[60,53,54,26,58,59,57,55,56],"class_list":["post-964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-technology","tag-activism","tag-firefox","tag-internet-explorer","tag-security","tag-spam","tag-spyware","tag-trojan","tag-virus","tag-worm","entry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-fy","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":807,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2006\/10\/17\/you-go-firefox\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":0},"title":"You go, Firefox!","author":"Keith Survell","date":"October 17, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Although the statistics for my website are wholly unscientific, it's still gratifying to see Firefox with such a huge percentage!","rel":"","context":"In "Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Internet","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/internet-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1203,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/07\/11\/pimping-firefox\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":1},"title":"Pimping Firefox","author":"Keith Survell","date":"July 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm a sucker for analogies like this (emphasis mine): 38.16% of the people who visit this site are still using Internet Explorer (IE). It\u2019s like buying a hybrid car for the gas mileage and then driving with flat tires and the doors open. Go on, go read the post -\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1554,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/12\/17\/nows-the-time-to-switch-to-firefox\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":2},"title":"Now’s the time to switch to Firefox","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"A serious security flaw has been found in Internet Explorer - no big surprise there. But this one really IS serious - it was found by attackers before it was found by Microsoft. So exploits are already out there \"in the wild.\" (This BBC News story has more details.) The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1027,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/01\/16\/bad-user-experience\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":3},"title":"Bad User Experience","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"You may have heard of this new-fangled thing from Microsoft called Silverlight. Well, I decided to take a look at it the other day, and when I tried to install it, I was greeted with this unfriendly screen: Well, actually it's not very unfriendly, but it certainly was unhelpful. Why\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1178,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/06\/17\/firefox-3-download-today\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":4},"title":"Firefox 3 – Download Today!","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Firefox 3 was released today - and of course I encourage everyone to go and grab it! It's really worth it - the new version not only looks nicer, but has thousands of little improvements - and those little things really add up. So what are you waiting for? Go\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":213,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2004\/08\/10\/mozilla-2-firefox-thunderbird\/","url_meta":{"origin":964,"position":5},"title":"Mozilla \/2 = Firefox + Thunderbird","author":"Keith Survell","date":"August 10, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"As a strong supporter of open-source thingies, I've been using Mozilla pretty much ever since it went to version 1.0 way back when. But lately the team over at Mozilla.org has split the \"Mozilla Suite\" into its two components: Firefox and Thunderbird. I highly recommend both of them!","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}