14 DAY TRIAL // If most users have begun to get used to the idea of a safe browser, other than Internet Explorer, as late as November 2003, when CERT Coordination Center firs recommended an alternative browser to the IE, currently no browser can be considered completely safe.
Even if Internet Explorer "updated" its vulnerabilities, caused by its extremely complicated architecture, at least once a week, the other browsing solutions haven't been able to stay out of the hackers' sight for long either.
All browsers are subjected to the same threats, even more so because generally they're based on a similar structure. If in order to make the IE safe, Microsoft has focused on Win XP SP2, the other browsers seemed to be out of harm's way, because they were less popular than Microsoft's solution.
But Firefox's popularity is now growing fast, and the latest versions of the Opera browser have recorded true "audience" records. However, the functional cores of these systems are quite similar: IE is based on ActiveX and the MSHTML engine, Apple's Safari is based on a component of the OS called Web Kit, and the solutions offered by the Mozilla Foundation (namely Firefox and the Mozilla Suite) are based on the Gecko Runtime Environment, or GRE. All these elements are already equal targets for the hackers, the inherent security breaches representing the gateway towards the information stored on the system.
According to the same stance, of "we're sorry, we can't offer a 100% safe browser", Microsoft has updated one of its security bulletins, that offers security advices to the users, so that they might enjoy a safe browsing experience. In other words, Microsoft would rather "educate" its users rather than fixing its own security problems. And these updated recommendations refer to a breach that is considered to be extremely critical by most security experts, because it can lead to a total takeover of the system by the hackers, even if the OS is updated and protected by using all the necessary means.