Which one is more secure: IE or Firefox?

Quote 'A' answers quote 'B'.

What is it that makes you think "one of these types" won't want to view advertising or will make use of NoScript's functionality, btw?

What is it that would make me think you're going to value my or anyone else's thoughts on the matter any more so than you would a multi-awarded Microsoft MVP of Security's thoughts?

Good luck to you.
Maybe at some point in the thread you'll hear from someone willing to go into whatever comparative detail you require.

 

Sorry, I thought this was a security discussion forum. I didn't come here to argue with you. I was just asking for anyone that bothered to answer the question to explain why they came to the conclusion they did. It seemed like a fair question to me.

 

Firefox makes use of DEP and ASLR too. You can even force it to run in protected mode but that might break some functionality (see this thread)

NoScript together with the Gecko/Firefox architecture offers the most fine grained control (like blocking <a ping>, iframes and the best XSS protection which even does it's work if you allow a site).

IE and most other major browsers support whitelisting too. If you only allow a handful of well regarded sites in the whitelist it's the most secure setup short of disabling plugins and javascript altogether.
The problem with this approach is it forces the user to make all decisions: Do I trust this site or not, do I still want to view this interactive content no matter what? Therefore it really doesn't matter much which software you use, it's about how you use it.

When it comes to security there are pretty much only two things to consider:
Using Adobe Plugins and Java is dangerous, so is allowing javascript. You are opening yourself to countless exploits, 0-days, drive-bys and there's not much you can do about that except sandboxing or disabling them.
Second: All modern browsers are large applications, largely written in C++. That means bugs, a lot of them, some of them having severe security implications. What can we do about that? Fix them promptly and apply the patches asap. MS and Apple have the worst track record here, MS has gotten better though but still, patch Tuesday can mean a significant window where you're left unprotected. Opera, Google and Mozilla usually react very fast, the latter two being open source have the advantage that we can also be quite sure there aren't any vulns hushed up for PR reasons.

 

You make a good point with the Adobe plugins. I have removed the PDF browser plugin from everyone's machine at work and have them run the gPDF add-on in Firefox. This opens a pdf web link in Google's Docs Viewer. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/14814/

 

See: Browser wars

 

From http://labs.mwrinfosecurity.com/notices/aurora_browser:

 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I use several different browsers and don't worry about a thing as I use Deep Freeze on my desktop and Returnil on my laptop. I also use Roboform Pro and Anti-Executable. If I pick something up - reboot and it's gone. To me, having instant restore at reboot renders the whole argument of this thread moot.

 

IE8 is NO MORE SECURE than IE6!!