Hi Do you have any use of Microsoft's ActiveX technology, or can you surf all the way without ever encountering any site requiring this technology? Personally, I completely uninstalled it years ago for security reasons, to reduce the surface of attack of the computer at a time when ActiveX was a major vector of intrusions. Do you think it's now safer than it once was? What are your experiences with ActiveX? Please feel free to give examples of sites that do require it. Thanks
I sometime have to use it on specific sites, for instance... Windows Updates. That's it. Fx anyother time.
Since IE7, yes. MS wanted to provide features in IE6, so IE6 installed activex without asking, but that lead to its popularity known as IE = mallware. In IE7 it was fixed, but bad reputation is not so easy to get back and also some people are bothered by asking, you can see it in UAC getting disabled. It is a simple security triangle (security - features - easy to use). Activex provides the most effective way of installing features, so it is the most dangerous.
"Yes, it is useful or even necessary for everyday surf" Actually, it's not useful. I have to use it (forcefully) to do internet banking etc. Korea needs a large reform in these things.
ActiveX is a bag of CRAP, STUPID, DANGEROUS and plenty of other names i could call it, none good. stefan_waelti " completely uninstalled it years ago " How did you do that ? I've been running IE6/7/8 over the years with it Completely disabled in Options along with iframes, and Scripting for 99% of the time.
ActiveX is brain damaged; it is dangerous, platform-specific, and unnecessary. When it was introduced (1996), it was already obsolete (Java came out in 1995). I can think of maybe a few excuses to use it; as a substitute for Java in online virus scanners, and... Uh... Yeah, that's kind of it. Microsoft's use of it in Windows Update was ridiculous (and as of Vista they seem to have realized that, unless I'm sorely mistaken). And any use of it for general web content should incur fines. (And online virus scanners strike me as kind of stupid, when I think about it. They rely on Windows' bad security model, i.e. stuff being able to run as admin from in a browser session... That's dumb, isn't it? I don't know, maybe I'm just tired and not thinking clearly.)
It's only useful in that some websites still use it. The "it's dangerous" argument grew stupid a long time ago. We now patch Flash, our PDF readers, Java, you name it, we patch it. It's code, it's all it is, it can be used for good and bad....and so can everything else.
