Is firefox safe to use?
By mepaurav
@mepaurav (201)
United States
July 21, 2009 10:44am CST
Recently my friend told me about firefox that it contains more malware than any other explorer.It was kind of shocking news to me.But to some extent i found some point in his words.Because i have seen sometimes i see lots of malware when i am using firefox.Is firefox really safe to use?
1 person likes this
5 responses
@SoftSeller (73)
• Canada
21 Jul 09
All of the major browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc.) do not contain malware unless it has been hacked (altered by a bad guy). Usually, you will get malware (viruses, trojans, worms, etc.) from going to an unsafe website or through email. The security of a browser comes into question when it allows these unsafe websites to install the malware onto your computer. With all the add-ins that are available (e.g. NoScript, Flash Block, etc.), it is one of the safest browsers around in this regard. Since the code is open source (meaning that you can look at the programming and customize it if you are a programmer) everyone who can understand the programming language can see exactly what Firefox is doing. This may seem like it's easier for a hacker to insert malicious code into Firefox but it could never be widely distributed without someone else (the good guys) knowing about it. If a problem is found with Firefox, there are many people who work to fix this and do so openly. So your friend who told you that "it contains more malware than any other explorer (I think you meant browser)" doesn't really know what he's talking about. What do you mean when you say "sometimes i see lots of malware when i am using firefox"? If you can see it, you can avoid it. Not like IE where sometimes you wonder what just happened.
@rsa101 (38166)
• Philippines
22 Jul 09
I guess I have to agree with you on this. My IE experience is really bad and they release security patches rather late therefore when patch has been released the malware has done so much damage already to the browser. With FF I have been with this browser when I first discovered it way back when they were version 1.xx back then. Before I do admit they have some issues with the way you look at websites there seems to be problem before and IE was still the best since the website looked pretty good in there but recently FF has improved pretty much okay in the way they read website and the malwares that are around seldom affects it as compared to IE were there are many vulnerabilities still hanging around.
@aravindkrd (610)
• India
22 Jul 09
Firefox does have some bugs and errors.. But they are mostly caused by some THIRD PARTY PLUGIN/Addon..
And about malware.. Internet Explorer is still the leader among the browsers for most number of crashes, most number of malwares, zero blocking pop ups.. etc..
so.. FIREFOX IS SAFE TO USE!
@kumarpslv (3216)
• India
22 Jul 09
It is safe browser ONLY if you download it from their official website and never down load the set up file from the other third party web sites. It seems that the other sites are having the set up file of fire fox bundled with some spy ware program which steals the information form us continuously.I red a discussion few days back in my lot where our fellow mylot members has such experience.Also Install the essential add ons with it. But such threats are common to all the browsers and not only with the fire fox
