Ever since FireFox was released as an alternative to Internet Explorer, the online community was split into two sides, each supporting a favorite browser. Polls, statistics and tests trying to justify either browser's popularity boost have animated the debates.

The newest study, probably to be argued within days, and performed by ScanIT web consultants, points out that Internet Explorer was around 80% unsafe during 2004, while FireFox barely "missed" around 15 percent. The results are based upon a tester developed by the company, Browser Security Checker, used by around 195,000 clients last year in order to detect whether their systems are vulnerable and whether the browser is the access gate for malicious codes.


According to ScanIT CEO, David Michaux, "around 98% of the Internet Explorer users were exposed to online threats during 2004; 200 days out of the whole 2004 (54% of last year) was dominated by activities specific to this worm or virus which exploited browser's vulnerabilities".

As a comparison, FireFox was only left unprotected to known vulnerabilities for 56 days last year; the open-source online browsing solution seems to rule.

Quite far from the race between the leaders Opera seems a solution much safer than the Microsoft, with a 17% vulnerability score for last year, (users were off-guard only 65 days).

ScanIT tests are available at: http://bcheck.scanit.be/bcheck/

RESOURCES

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