1. Browser Upgrade: Singing Opera's Praises
   
   Bigger is not always better. Take Web browsers, for example. Internet Explorer commands roughly 85 percent of browser usage. Firefox hovers somewhere around 12 percent. At less than 1 percent is Opera. Oddly enough, this least-used of the browsers is among the best of the lot -- at least as good as Firefox and far better than IE.
   
   First released in 1997 by the Norwegian company Opera Software, Opera has always sought to be faster, leaner, more stable and more flexible than any of its competitors. With the December release of version 9.1, it adds an improved layer of security and clever new features that further enhance its functionality, all in a free download that is only 4.9 MB in size.
   
   The big news in version 9.1 is Opera's greater protection against phishing -- fraudulent Web sites that try to steal your personal information. The latest versions of IE and Firefox also offer anti-phishing protection, but Opera is the only browser that teams up with both digital-certificate provider GeoTrust and phishing information clearinghouse PhishTank, a collaborative service that constantly collects data on suspicious URLs.
   
   When Opera's anti-phishing protection is activated, the browser monitors every visited site against the GeoTrust and PhishTank data and warns you when you visit a suspicious site. Even if you have not enabled the protection, a question-mark icon in your navigation window tells you whether the site is verified and, if not, lets you check it with a single mouse click.
   
   BETTER BELLS AND WHISTLES
   
   Beyond security, Opera offers the bells and whistles now standard in the latest versions of IE and Firefox -- tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, integrated search, blocking of cookies and a password manager. But it adds further refinements to many of these features that make them even more useful.
   
   A good example is tabbed browsing. First, Opera places the tabs above the address bar, where they belong. Second, it offers thumbnail previews of tabs. Say you have 10 open tabs and cannot remember which is which. Hover your mouse over any tab and Opera shows you a quick thumbnail of the page open in that tab.
   
   Finally, Opera does tabs one better, offering a true multiple-document interface. This means that you can resize pages and tile them next to each other on the same active workspace, allowing you to compare or work with several open pages -- perhaps a Web page open next to a pane in which you are composing an e-mail.
   
   Opera is a particularly good choice for anyone with a visual impairment. Most notably, it incorporates voice and speech. A user can control Opera using voice commands and can have Opera read open documents aloud. Another visual aid is Opera's ability to zoom in or out on a page from 20 percent to 1,000 percent. Also, Opera offers a selection of views that convert Web pages to text or display them in high contrast to make them easier to read.
   
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2. the real story on browser vulnerabilities
   
   Security expert at the Washington Post, Brian Krebs, explains:
   

   For a total 284 days in 2006 (or more than nine months out of the year), exploit code for known, unpatched critical flaws in pre-IE7 versions of the browser was publicly available on the Internet. Likewise, there were at least 98 days last year in which no software fixes from Microsoft were available to fix IE flaws that criminals were actively using to steal personal and financial data from users.

   He even provides a nice chart demonstrating how, through out the year, IE users were under nearly constant attack on the web.
   
   Brian goes on to describe Firefox:
   

   In contrast, Internet Explorer's closest competitor in terms of market share -- Mozilla's Firefox browser -- experienced a single period lasting just nine days last year in which exploit code for a serious security hole was posted online before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem.

   Security is a process that includes among other things careful design, intense code review, heavy testing, and quick response when flaws are discovered. While all software as complex as web browsers will have flaws, including security and privacy vulnerabilities, it is clear that some organizations have processes in place that are better equipped to manage and mitigate the risk. This article leaves little doubt that the process we have at Mozilla has been orders of magnitude more effective at protecting users from online threats than what Microsoft customers have been offered.
   
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3. Slow but steady market share increases for Firefox, Opera and Safari
   
   In the past year, Opera has leapfrogged Netscape as the fourth-most-popular browser. In March 2006, Opera owned 0.54 percent of the browser market, a figure now at 0.79 percent. Meanwhile, Netscape has dipped from 1.05 percent to 0.74 percent.
   
   Vincent Vizzaccaro, executive vice president or marketing and strategic relationships, told SCMagazine.com today that the trend of alternative browsers gaining market share should continue barring a groundbreaking product from Microsoft.
   
   "I think that people are accustomed to thinking of Opera and Firefox as being the innovators," he said. "I think the trend continues unless there is a brand new feature that Microsoft has in the works that no one knows about."
   
   John Pescatore, Gartner analyst, told SCMagazine.com today that growth in alternative browsers is due to an increase in Linux desktops, as well as security concerns.
   
   "I think there’ve been two factors – one is the growth in Linux applications and desktops," he said. "On Windows machines, the growth has been due mostly to spyware."
   
   Firefox, Safari and Opera have partially built their popularity on security.
   
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4. What percentage of known security bugs in browsers are actually fixed?
   
   Well, if you’re using the Opera browser, then 100 percent of the reported security bugs/vulnerabilities were fixed. In fact, Opera is the only browser (among the big ones – Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, and Safari) to have patched 100% of its known security bugs, according to Secunia, a site that tracks security vulnerabilities in various applications.
   
   Ben Buchanan, on his blog, wrote about this a couple days ago. He compared the patch rate on security bugs in the four major browsers (IE, Opera, Firefox, and Safari).
   
   Browser patches between Feb 2003 and Jan 2007:
   
   • IE6 – 67% patched (out of 110 reported bugs).
     
   • IE7 – 25% patched (out of 4 reported bugs).
     
   • Firefox 1 – 87% patched (out of 39 reported bugs).
     
   • Firefox 2 – 50% patched (out of 4 reported bugs).
     
   • Opera 8 – 100% patched (out of 15 reported bugs).
     
   • Opera 9 – 100% patched (out of 3 reported bugs).
     
   • Safari 1 – 93% patched (out of 15 reported bugs).
     
   • Safari 2 – 33% patched (out of 6 reported bugs).
   
   More...

OK, how many times must Internet Explorer be ripped open like a hot 16-year old in a summer slasher movie before people finally get it: IE is not safe. Period. End of Statement.

I don't care if you only run it around the Web on Sundays and to the nicest sites. If you run IE, you're just asking to me slammed by worms, bots, adware, and every other kind of malware on the planet. No, it doesn't matter that you're using XP SP2 and you've downloaded all the patches. The only version that appears to be immune is IE7 beta-2.

Take the IE code execution hole discovered by Secunia Research a few days ago. Microsoft admits that it's there. That's big of them. Malicious hackers have already been using the hole via hijacked Web servers over the weekend to launch attacks.

What I want to know is why any of you are still using Internet Explorer? I mean how many attacks does it take?

Here's the simple truth: Even if you don't believe in Linux, open-source, and all that jazz, no one who knows anything about computer security can believe that IE has been, is now, or is likely to be secure anytime soon.