Just how secure is Firefox2 compared to IE?


Only a naff got through from this Russian site, through FireFox 2, and it took ages to get rid of (hence me not being online for most of yesterday).

A hell of a lot. Firefox has all kinds of protection whereas Internet Explorer generally just allows anything to go through onto your system (due to the fact that it is so fixed into your system through a lot of system level hooks)

Also, what kind of naff? And ideally what extensions/add ons have you installed, because it might be one of those that have let "naff" into your system.

Something that was sending out loads of spam emails.

FF doesn't block email spam.

No no no, read my post. Some program got through FF2, and extracted itself and started using this pc to email various random looking address (we could tell because Avast's mail scanner went crazy, scanning all the 'outgoing emails' we were not sending. It managed to get out 30-odd before the net was killed (pulling the plug on the router).

Hmm,w ell some stuff can get through, but FF is usually pretty good at asking (do you want to download this etc). However, it may have got through Java or something running in FF.

You got pwnt by a windows bug

Zero-day sh!t

Got any traces of these emails?

Also... which computer... OS?

The XP SP2 one, fully updated and everything.

Windows bug, haven't heard of this one?

Well, even though I was using firefox2, the virus somehow ended up in my IE temporary internet files where it began extracting itself and doing stuff.

Hmm, sounds nasty. I doubt it was directly related to FF though.

Java can give u viruses? I use the Java applet chat window on Serebii and never had a problem.....

Java is a programming language. If someone writes something that gives you a virus, it will give you a virus. Java itself isn't a virus.

You didn't know you could get viruses through Java?

Infact you can get viruses through anything that connects you to the outside world. Though some things (like FF) are much more secure.

Java is generally safe, it is entirely sandboxed so can hardly ever do you harm.

JavaSCRIPT however is completely unrelated and can allow anyone to do anything with your browser, even if you dont know it sometimes.

Same difference. Quite a lot of people refer to JS as Java. It's also coffee.

Yea.. what do you think you drink while your writing the stuff

No??? Since when have I cared much for that sort of thing....I use FF now, and consequently I haven't had any problems for a long time....

EDIT: @ Quote stopper

LOL, Si.

And SB, Java is a plugin, FF has little control over what it does. It can stop it from loading sometimes, but most the time it just runs.