Public Service Announcement

Since launching Curiously Jeremiah, Internet Explorer use to my site has dropped to only 18.5% of all visitors, compared to over 30% before, while traffic to my site has increased 15%. My detour is working.

I do not want to beat this issue to death, but a very very very serious Internet Explorer vulnerability is being exploited on a large scale.

This insidious worm has been placed on numerous popular websites (running Microsoft IIS 5), ones you might visit every day, that will exploit an Internet Explorer vulnerability to install keylogging spyware on your computer, which will grab any sensitive data you type, such as your bank account passwords. It appears that organized crime syndicates in Europe have hacked into these major websites and installed this worm. The Internet Storm Center is advising Internet Explorer users to switch to another browser until Microsoft has patched the security hole and you’ve installed that patch.

I recommend downloading Mozilla Firefox as your temporary (and maybe even permanent) browser. It’s reliable and secure.

Think I’m just crying wolf? Major news media outlets report:
FOX News: Latest Computer Virus Nastiest of All
BBC News: Web browser flaw prompts warning… to avoid using Internet Explorer
News.com.com.com: Researchers warn of infectious Web sites
Techdirt: Don’t Visit Websites With Microsoft IE
US-CERT: IIS 5 Web Server Compromises

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 27th, 2004 at 16:05 and is tagged .

5 Responses to “Public Service Announcement”

  1. David Troyer Says:
    June 27th, 2004 at 19:57

    Hopefully this will give some other browser vendors some due attention by the general public.

  2. Tom Says:
    June 28th, 2004 at 0:40

    I hope it works Jeremiah. I agree with you 100% about IE. Mozilla is solid for PC.

  3. Bryan Says:
    June 29th, 2004 at 12:25

    I’m going to my mom’s on Thursday and switching her to Firefox and Thunderbird.

    One other good side effect of this change will be getting her away from Incredimail. No more annoying, animated, sound filled e-mails ::awesome::

  4. David Troyer Says:
    July 2nd, 2004 at 11:43

    Stupid question, but how does the full version of Mozilla compare to the Firefox Thunderbird combo?

  5. Jeremiah Says:
    July 2nd, 2004 at 15:31

    Firefox and Thunderbird use a lightweight XUL GUI optimized for respective OSes. Mozilla Suite is the obese sibling that also features an IRC client and WYSIWYG HTML editor. If you don’t need these two other features, I suggest using Firefox and Thunderbird.