Microsoft Urges Australians to Abandon IE6

In a promotional campaign in Australia, Microsoft is advising users of Internet Explorer 6 to move to its latest version. The IE6 browser was introduced in 2001.

Microsoft stated that Internet standards are developing continuously and IE6 is increasingly vulnerable to virus and malware assaults. Therefore, the world's biggest software company recommends that people using IE6 upgrade to IE8, the most recent edition of Internet Explorer. The company is raising the slogan, "You wouldn't drink nine-year-old milk, so why use a nine-year-old browser?", to promote the use of its new IE version. Dynamicbusiness.com.au reported this on May 17, 2010.

Indeed to demonstrate that IE6 is prone to risk, Microsoft gives certain examples. During late 2009, hackers exploited a security flaw within IE6 for theft of sensitive data from many prominent technology companies, particularly Google.

Besides, many leading websites and online services are treating IE6 with a cold shoulder. Digg, Facebook, Google's YouTube and Gmail have already declared that they are no more in favor of IE6.

Moreover, according to Microsoft, Australians, in 2008, lost $36 Million on account of Nigerian e-mail frauds, with the majority of victims so embarrassed that they didn't report to the police, while 50% were so ashamed that they didn't tell anyone about their situation. Theregister.com reported this on May 16, 2010.

Notably, Microsoft Australia wishes that Australian users in addition to downloading IE8 e-mail the company other IE6 users' names as also contact information they know to enable it to communicate to them about the new IE release, of 2009. IE6 has almost 18% of Web-surfers using the version.

Moreover, through its new propaganda, Microsoft is also trying to impress IE6 users to abandon Firefox 3, Safari 4, Chrome 2 and Opera 10 beta, which as per a NSS Labs research, can catch "socially engineered" malicious programs 27%, 21%, 7% and 1% of the times respectively. This is in comparison to IE8, which can catch similar malware 85% on 85% of the occasions.

Finally, the propaganda has also received the support of two major newspapers of Norway along with local newspapers, the Yellow Pages, ISPs and search engines as well as other communities that advise IE users to adopt IE8.

Related article: Microsoft Patches Live OneCare to Tackle Quarantined E-Mails

» SPAMfighter News - 5/27/2010