Firefox users

[Tommy Gun]

Is there any gain/loss of keeping IE protection on if you use Firefox only?

[MikeBCda]

Hi and welcome,

This has already been discussed somewhere else here -- maybe someone else will be kind enough to supply a specific link.

Basically, you want to keep up to date with critical upgrades to IE and all installed MS products, even if you don't use them. There are too many cases where exploits to one or more of these can be downloaded via Firefox (or just about any browser, for that matter) and then made active without your knowledge or consent. IE is particularly critical, in all but very early versions of Win, simply because it's so tightly integrated into the OS.

[patermann]

{QUOTE-> This has already been discussed somewhere else here -- maybe someone else will be kind enough to supply a specific link. <-QUOTE}
Link: SpywareGuard needed with Firefox? (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=65201)

Also, although you may not use IE for browsing directly, other applications such as Outlook/Outlook Express use the IE rendering engine for HTML. Even Windows Explorer uses IE if you enable Web content on the desktop and/or in folders. So, although you use an alternative browser for the Web, you may still be affected by IE-only nasties.

Interesting (maybe) fact: I have always used Netscape/Mozilla browsers, only using IE for Windows Update. Some time ago (pre-Firefox), after browsing the Web site of a UK magazine (PC Pro) with Mozilla, I changed to IE to check Windows Update and was shocked to see that PC Pro had added a new folder with several links into my IE favorites - from Mozilla! I still don't know how it did that - very worrying.

HTH

patermann