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For all the Fools and Idiots Who Think They're Safe:

There is no one operating system, browser, anti-virus, firewall, hardware router, or whatever, that cannot be exploited. Thousands of people are constantly looking for a way to hack everything.

The closest you can get to safety is to accept what I wrote above as gospel, keep your OS, browser, anti-virus and firewall updated and watch always for changes in your system.

If you don't understand what I just said, you are part of the problem.

Correct you are! The primary security risk on ALL equipment is physical access. There is almost no computer I can't hack if I have physical access to it(I don't mean with an axe either). I can change the password, thus reconfigure a Cisco Router in about 5min if I have physical access to it.

I can't tell you how many well protected systems I've seen against remote access be so easy to break into by simply opening an unlocked door.

Yep, what one man can make, another man can break.

Mozilla is far from perfect. Images associating with the Downloads box, and it's problems for some users, shows the Mozilla coders can also be mind numbingly stupid. But the popup blocker and adblocker extension are the main reasons I stick with it.

There is no one operating system, browser, anti-virus, firewall, hardware router, or whatever, that cannot be exploited.

I've never claimed there was. Anyone who visits my FR homepage will find it full of PC/Windows security-related links.

While I offer alternatives to MSIE, I also link to an article with tips on how to harden IE. The choice is up to the individual. I hope they make an educated one.

Again, I have never claimed that Mozilla, Firefox or Opera were immune to virii, malware, etc. However, these browsers simply do not suffer from the myriad IE-only vulnerabilities, which include, but are not limited to, those related to AciveX. (E.G. drive-by downloads.)

For those interested in PC security-related links, visit my FR homepage. The information is there. Do what you will with it.

"There is no one operating system, browser, anti-virus, firewall, hardware router, or whatever, that cannot be exploited"

That's precisely the point we tried to make to the open source fanatics before.
But, no, they had to keep insisting that it's only Microsoft products that had security issues, and that the super coders of the open source Firefox program had gotten the security problems fixed.

In reality of course, very few hackers had bothered to attack Firefox. That is why security issues for Firefox did not come to the fore before.

If I write a lil browser at home, and keep it on my computer, and no one knows about it, of course its going to have 100% security record, BECAUSE NO ONE ATTACKED IT BEFORE.
So to compare the most attacked browser by far on the planet, Microsoft Internet Explorer, to any other browser, which has had very little attacks against it, is not exactly a fair or right comparison to make.

The closest you can get to safety is to accept what I wrote above as gospel, keep your OS, browser, anti-virus and firewall updated and watch always for changes in your system.

The simplistic advice you "wrote above as gospel" is incomplete and inadequate for security purposes. Keeping things updated is important - but it will not improve your security much if your basic design is flawed. To get truly good security, it is essential that you start with a well-designed foundation.

To put it in terms you can understand, let's consider the design issues of the "The Three Little Pigs". The first two little pigs were ignorant. They thought that design didn't matter, so they chose to built their houses from straw and sticks. Of course, we all know what happened to those foolish little pigs - they were eaten by the Big Bad Wolf!

But the third little pig was smart. He understood the importance of using a good design as the basis for a secure home, so he built his house from bricks. He survived! So the moral of the story is that to have "the closest you can get to safety", you must start with a good design.

It's that way with operating systems too. Microsoft Windows is a poorly-designed house of straw. Merely keeping a house of straw updated won't do much to improve your basic security.