Where did I say I go unprotected? I buy the best protection I can get. I am certainly not going to rely on freeware submitted by some Joe working in his basement to protect myself.
Security is not my main reason for using Firefox, it the customizability. With the downloadable themes and extensions, I can make the browser look and act almost any way I want.
For example, my most-used extension is AdBlock. Instead of having to look at annoying animated advertising on my Yahoo mail, I just right-click and add the server to the AdBlock list. Advertising from that server will never display again, on any page.
Plus the toolbars are completely customizable, I can move, add, or remove buttons as my browsing style dictates.
Yeah, I started ranting on the world and didn't really direct that statement to you in particular:)
I am certainly not going to rely on freeware submitted by some Joe working in his basement to protect myself.
I used to feel the same way. I had Mcaffe anti virus and firewall and all the bells and whistles shredder, quick clean etc.I liked the program but my install disk was always buggy giving me all sorts of error messages and hanging on boot-ups until one day it just died.BTW I got no response to my complaints to Mcaffe.I had already heard about AVG and Zone Alarm and even tried them out on one of my machines.Since then I've gone to ALL freeware AVG,Zone alarm,Adaware,Spybot.These are not cheesy programs written by some geek in a basement and most of them offer a "professional" version that you can actually pay for if that makes you feel better.