Comments on: Security issues haunt Firefox

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:39:06 +0000

I’ve been using FF (safe mode) since I had to wipe my hard drive about 5 months ago due to rampant adware.

Occasionally a pop-up will sneak past FF’s protections, but otherwise no problems so far – and it appears to be intercepting “drive by” downloads by requiring a yes/no signoff prior to allowing same onto my HD (which is where most if not all of the adware had been coming from).

I plan on staying with FF for the foreseeable future as I cannot imagine IE ever achieving this degree of reliability.

By: Jim C.

Jim C. — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 03:59:57 +0000

Syl wrote: “I’ve been using IE for years and have yet to get any adware or a virus.”

Same for me. I had my settings to always prompt me if I wanted to run scripts, ActiveX, and a few other relatively risky things.

But I switched to Firefox anyway. I did pick up some adware probably because now I always have javascript enabled, but I’ve become more careful and for questionable sites I use a separate profile with javascript disabled.

“I tried Firefox, didn’t like it. I use a local page of links as my startup page and it didn’t allow that. So I uninstalled it.”

I also use a local startup page (on the HD of my home PC), and Firefox allowed it with no problems.

By: Peg C.

Peg C. — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 19:51:36 +0000

Syl, thanks for the info! Even though most of my co-workers come to me for PC help (forget calling the Helpless Desk) — for example when the Win2K folks got slammed by the virus and didn’t know what to do — I’m a mainframer and generally too busy and too lazy to dig into javascript in IE and I just switch browsers instead. Good for you for pursuing that.

By: Chris W.

Chris W. — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 02:15:39 +0000

I’ve been using Firefox since last summer, and have had very few security-type problems, other than the usual spyware and cookie stuff. I started using Firefox because IE was getting hijacked at least once a WEEK on both my office and home computers. Comparing Firefox to IE, I have had so few problems with Firefox that it’s not even funny.

By: ClericalGal

ClericalGal — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 01:21:42 +0000

My sister, who is a real estate agent, was visiting me for a few days. She wanted to use my computer (she has no laptop) to look at the online MLS listings. I told her to use Firefox instead of IE because I thought it was better. When I retured home from work, she told me that she was able to get on the MLS website but was unable to search the listings using Firefox. She then used IE and was able to search. After she was done, I did a spyware scan and saw that I had picked up a number of ad cookies and spyware, which I never get when I use Firefox. I’m sticking with it!

By: Syl

Syl — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 01:01:30 +0000

Peg

The Haloscan thing is security. I finally figured it out, I’m kinda proud. Haloscan comments are run via javascript from a third party site. That’s a no no.

If Firefox allows that, it’s not good.

If the blog user has copied the haloscan script to their own site, then IE will read the comments. That’s why some sites comments come up and others don’t.

I found a site that had the haloscan script and I managed to copy it to my harddrive (a little trickery…I created a webpage with a link to the haloscan javascript, loaded that page, then right-clicked and saved it.)

Now if I can’t open haloscan comments I save the blog page to my temporary directory where I have the haloscan script, open the page from there and click the comments and they come up. I can still post.

By: Peg C.

Peg C. — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 21:19:12 +0000

Roger, IBM is donating 50K lines of code to Firefox:

link…

It’s being pushed at work so most of us use both IE and Firefox. I find no unusual security issues with it, although it handles certain blogs’ Haloscan comments when IE barfs on them for some reason. This could be an indication of looser security. Firefox frequently hangs on me when printing, and it doesn’t handle certain corporate web apps well. So after Firefox hangs, I got to IE; when that prevents me from commenting on a site, I go to Firefox. Basically my laptop is a warzone and I’m resigned to it.

I also detest the tabbed browsing in Firefox and find they are unruly. Whatever the point of those is escapes me.

By: changehappens

changehappens — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:39:10 +0000

I have a story on this. Yesterday, the company I work for suffered a huge outage due to a virus. Machines went into a reboot loop for about 4 hours. Internet traffic hit a jam like being on I-5 in LA, during a monster rainstorm after a 20 car pile up.

I kept on working though, albet at a crawl, but my PC never misbehaved. The only difference we found was that I used Firefox at work while most of the others used IE. Why do I use FireFox? About 1 year ago, my PC was deeply disturbed due to spyware and adware. Naturally I had been using IE. After downloading and religiously running MS AntiSpyWare, the nasty bugs were removed but I moved on to Netscape and Firefox. Now I have had nothing but tranquil surfing, boring but drama free.

By: Luther McLeod

Luther McLeod — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:52:42 +0000

Dang David, I’ll start packing my meager possessions. Assuming I will be allowed to keep them of course :-}

By: David Thomson

David Thomson — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 09:11:22 +0000

ìWhy anyone would bother with a Wintel machine, let alone IE, is hard for me to understand.î

They must be Communist reactionaries of the lowest kind. Sending them to the Gulag would be an act of kindness. We Apple users have every right to act condescendingly towards these aberrant human beings. I have no idea what it is to endure the problems commonly referred to by those using Microsoft products.