Time to give Firefox a try!

This week saw the disclosure of yet another Internet Explorer security hole — yet another one that could be used to give full remote control of your computer to someone else.

This one was a flaw in Microsoft”s ActiveScripting (it”s name for Microsoft”s custom implementation of JavaScript). Simply visiting a malicious web site can give control to the bad guys!

The relatively unique problem with this one is that, on the first day of the announcement about the security hole, there was also an exploit in the wild. That is, there was already at least one web site found trying to make use of the security hole.

The big tech web sites are recommending that you turn off Active Scripting in Internet Explorer. This really is necessary because of the ubiquitous nature of I.E. Since Microsoft decided to build I.E. “into the operating system,” its functions are readily called by many other programs. Outlook and Outlook Express use I.E. in embedded windows to display HTML emails. Similarly, other email programs can use I.E., but some allow you to use non-I.E. HTML display methods — Eudora does this.

Of course, if you use I.E. and turn off Active Scripting, many web sites will not display properly.

Now is the time, and the excuse if you needed one, to try the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

Read about Firefox at my Terry”s Computer Tips web site.