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I don't use firefox because I am worried it is less secure than IE.
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ignorance to explain what kinds of volnurabilities firefox has and what kinds of volnurabilities IE has is what leads to such reviews...
first of all, IE works on 1 platform and runs on one OS, windows, in comparison Firefox runs on OS X, Linux (all distributions), BSD (net, free, open), Solaris, Irix and Windows, that means that there are at least 8 times the amount of places that security volnurabilities can be found, that's not even mentioning major distros of linux, code for which can be quite a bit different, raising that number to at over a dozen times the amount of places things can go wrong, notice in 11 out of 12, it doesnt even touch you! now, Firefox also compiles on multiple different hardware platforms, for which the code is different once again, namely, x86, AMD64, PPC, PPC64, spark, spark64 and mips, that times the oses that run on the arches:
x86: windows, Linux, BSD, OS X, Solaris
AMD64: windows, Linux, Solaris
PPC: Linux, OS X (BSD?)
PPC64: Linux, OS X
Spark: Linux, Solaris, BSD
Spark 64: Linux, Solaris, BSD
Mips: Linux, Irix
So, this brings it to 20 different platfors, to get things wrong, yes some code remains the same on some platforms, but still there is enouh code to get things go wrong on one platform while making an improvement in another. (p.s. platform is either OS or Compiler)
Given that there is a lot more places for things to go wrong, you have to judge what kinds of things go wrong with IE vs Firefox, in other words, what kinds of flaws are you looking at, security-wise:
so lets see some results of the google new search for IE security Flaws:
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The error could be exploited to fake the address bar in a browser window, according to an advisory notice from security monitoring company Secunia. This tactic could be used in phishing scams that attempt to trick people into believing they are on a legitimate site, when in fact they are viewing a fraudulent web page.
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Microsoft today issued a cumulative security update for the Internet Explorer browser, which covers a total of eight remote code execution vulnerabilities as well as one information disclosure vulnerability and one spoofing vulnerability.
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[quote]The vulnerability went from a theoretical to a real risk last weekend when security folks began seeing websites where malware authors were using the exploit to break into fully-patched Windows PCs. [quote]
ok, now the same for firefox:
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The vulnerability went from a theoretical to a real risk last weekend when security folks began seeing websites where malware authors were using the exploit to break into fully-patched Windows PCs. The quantity of sites hosting the malicious code now number in the hundreds.
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Of the vulnerabilities mentioned by US-CERT, four deal with JavaScript handling issues, two with XBL, two over CSS issues, two with memory corruption, and another that covers a problem with the way the browser handles display styles.
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Some of the security lapses in Mozilla software, which Firefox is based on, could allow malicious hackers to hijack computers.
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So i wont lie and say that FF does not present hijacking volnurabilities (at least in windows it used to), also that FF has fewer volnurabilities. But, FF does totally block out the ActiveX componets, and their volnurabilities are usually pretty harmless. that said, FF has maybe had 4 times the volnurabilities then IE6 this year, but IE has had at least 6 more years to patch their problems then FF, and also firefox has way better features, that actually make it much more secure then IE, namely:
Add'n Edit Cookies, which allows you to do just that
Dr. Web Anti-Virus Link Checker, scanning files for viruses before you download them. Basically, this extension adds an option to the link context menu that allows you to pass the link to the Dr. Web AV service.
NoScript allows to stop execution of scripts on websites
Temperdata allows you to temper with form data fields
AdBlock allows you to block any website content, with bendable user-defined rules, so if you wanted to say block any domain that has the word googleads in it, all you have to add is *gogleads* to the list of blocked items and you are done...
plus firefox has no files where it keeps all the data you have ever etered in any field in it that you can not remove with clear all temp data, it also has a built in popup blocker and searchbar that allows you to add virtualy any search engine to it...
