Sunday, June 5, 2011

Why it is Time to Upgrade From Internet Explorer 6

Yet another major site, this time Google, has announced that they are no longer going to support Internet Explorer version 6 for the services on their site like Google Docs and others. The reason is because there are major security flaws in the browser that can lead to attacks on the server which Google does not want to deal with any longer. If you are using Internet Explorer 6, it is time to upgrade to a newer version.

Not only are there issues for servers that you visit with this browser, you are extremely vulnerable using this old browser. There are security holes in it that version 7 and version 8 have long since fixed. If you are using Internet Explorer, or any other browser, make sure that you have updated it. If not, you are just asking to be taken advantage of. When Microsoft drops support of older versions of the browser, you will never get security updates ever again.

Many people may be unaware of the issues that browsers have since it is something they have always used. The thought is that at one point you were safe, so what is the point of upgrading? People who make malicious files like viruses and spyware look for holes in your browser. While it might have been safe at one point in time, once the holes are found, the browser is no longer safe.

If you want to avoid extra spyware issues on your machine, do your best to keep your browser updated as well as updating things like your Flash plugin which can leave a browser vulnerable as well. It will take two minutes to help a wide variety of the servers you visit to not have to be open to problems that are caused by your extremely old browser.

An alternative is to also consider getting a different browser than Internet Explorer. There are other popular browsers like Firefox, Opera, and Chrome to consider.

Source: http://goo.gl/NFaPl

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