"No, only saying that I've been lucky enough or smart enough to avoid being bitten by them." So why not take the extra step and try eliminating the "luck" and the human-factor from the equation. Some are obviously not so lucky or are not as smart as you - hence this thread. "Doubtful since I check my system regularly for just such an occurrence." I was not talking about you specifically ... hence the word "THEY" referring to people who will continue using IE no matter what. And I did use the word MIGHT. Do a poll here asking "Do you check you system regularly for malware using the newest definitions available even if you haven't noticed anything odd in your machine's behaviour?" What do you think will be the prevailing answer? Btw: I've encountered malware that were present and not detected by newest Adaware definitions or newest virus descriptions of a commercial virus-scanner. That was at my in-laws' place: the malware in question slowed turning off the computer, but otherwise was unable to do anything because of an active firewall quietly blocking it's activities. It took some time to get rid of it ... and in the process I learned that it was one of the many malware programs using IE's vulnerabilities. They downloaded an alternative browser the very next day. "I've been programming and working with computers since before the first IBM PC so I'm well aware of the threats and what they can do. I'm not saying that IE is problem free by any means, merely that by being proactive and taking the time to guard against potential threats, one can avoid the vast majority of pitfalls that some people seem to have." I too have a mere 20 years of experience with computing ... however the vast majority does not have that luxury and may not want to invest hours upon hours investigating security issues just to be proactive. To those people alternatives to IE and it's downfalls do exist. Surfing with IE can be safe: that is not the issue. The issue is that it is not safe without learning how to disable much of it's default settings - leading to unwanted behaviour when surfing at sites meant to take full advantage of those settings. "Faced with a choice of using IE's features, which work for the vast majority of visitors, trying to duplicate them for another browser or coding a plain vanilla site that will work for any browser, guess which one most have chosen? " I'm being involved in web-site design as well... doing a site for DOM-compliant browsers (IE5+, NS6+, FF, Opera 5+ etc) is not difficult nor does it require any kind of tricks - it just requires some basic knowledge and testing from the web-designer. Btw: "Plain and vanilla" sites are oftenmost the ones which are most user-friendly, informative and long-lived (like Rendo here). Much of this comes from the fact the they have been designed to serve and not to show off special tricks. This is, however, somewhat OT. "Just don't expect that FireFox is going to lead to some hacker free Nirvana." Exactly. I'm not saying it's perfect - far from it. But it sure currently offers much better protection than IE - with default settings, might I add. VMWare and other virtual operating systems are really not an option for the vast majority of surfers out there. Much more cheaper, quicker and user-friendly means exist to provide a little-bit safer environment to surf. That would be mainly updating Windows+IE on a weekly basis and learning how to shut down some of IE's worst vulnerabilities ... or one could TRY using an alternative browser. Opera is as good security-wise as FireFox or Mozilla for the average-surfers out there. "There are alternatives but saying that using IE will inevitably lead to doom and destruction simply isn't true." I don't anyone has said that. I know I haven't. I still use IE regularly, but only to test my own designs. Personally I've had lots of problems with IE's security, but as said... surfing with IE can be safe. Lmckenzie: please note that this is not supposed to be flammatory or personal by any means. As English is not my first language, some wordings may sound a bit on the rougher side. Apologies for that.