Evil spyware mucking up my computer

[Jeremy]

I kind of know where you're coming from, Lhadatt, I've had to help my grandfather get his computer un-screwed up from spyware, and teach my mom how to use her laptop and keep it from getting screwed up.

[Lhadatt]

I typically do not go a day on my helpdesk job without getting a call about a spyware problem, and I'm just part-time there. So, yeah, it's not something the average user knows how to deal with.

[DArque Bishop]

I don't feel Mozilla-derived browsers are at a level for me to use daily yet.

Thousands of people would disagree with you.

As it stands, there is only one website out there which I absolutely have to use MSIE for, and that's due to the stupidity of the website's coders than anything else. (They won't allow access to browsers other than MSIE and Netscape over certain version numbers, and there's no contact link to tell them that Mozilla 1.0 and higher are a more recent version than the version of Netscape they support.) Otherwise, I run Mozilla Firefox with absolutely no issues whatsoever.

Just my $.02...

[Kenshin]

Thousands of people would disagree with you.

Out of millions of web users.

Good for you. Now kindly realize that most users don't know enough about their systems to take such precautions. Have you ever worked tech support or systems administration? If not, I suggest you try it sometime, if only to appriciate how little the average user actually knows about a computer.

I've been working tech support and admin at my office. I make it my business to EDUCATE them. We all use IE there, and we haven't had any sort of viral/spyware mishap in well over a year.

[Lhadatt]

Out of millions of web users.

The Mozilla dev team hasn't released any numbers that I can tell, but I'm pretty sure it's in active use in a far larger segment of the browser market than you think.

I've been working tech support and admin at my office. I make it my business to EDUCATE them. We all use IE there, and we haven't had any sort of viral/spyware mishap in well over a year.

Education is a good thing, teaching them what not to do is good. However, I don't believe in educating people to use a flawed product. It's a waste of time for all parties involved, especially when IE is so vulnerable to attack. Your model may work in the microcosm that is your office, but it doesn't work among users in the real world. An admin cannot visit each user's home to fix their computers. Even when you tell them what to do, via written instructions, email or on the phone, they tend to not do it. They don't listen, they can't be educated. It's like the spyware threads on this board -- this is the third place we've discussed it from recent memory. We don't need to have threads on everyone's issue, so I made that tutorial that's stickied to the topic list. Dollars to donuts, someone will ignore it and make a new thread about spyware in their machine within the next week.

Actually, I try to do my part to educate users. I do mention in that stickied thread a few options for them if they insist on using IE. I don't see much value in continuing to use it though -- most things can be replicated in Mozilla by sticking to standardized code, and what can't typically doesn't need to be done unless it's a dedicated application built specifically for IE.