Internet users usually open up their web browsers to surf their favorite web sites without a lot of thought put into it. But Microsoft is launching a new web site that is designed to alert Internet users to the dangers of web surfing, particularly on older web browser versions. The web site is Yourbrowsermatters.org which tells a visitor how secure their browser is to threats like malware and phishing attacks on a scale of 0 to 4.
According to a post on Microsoft"s official Internet Explorer web site, 24.4 percent of all the PCs in the world that are connected to the Internet run an outdated version of a web browser. Microsoft says that amount comes to 340 million PCs that don"t run the latest version of their web browser software. The number of PCs in the world that run Internet Explorer 6 or 7 total 15.2 percent while PCs who run Mozilla"s Firefox 3.6 or older amount to 7.5 percent. PCs who run the 12th version or older of Google"s Chrome browser are in 1.7 percent of all PCs. Chrome is the only one of the three web browsers that now automatically updates to the newest version, without any need for a user"s approval.
Yourbrowsermatters.org goes over some of the things that people can do to be more secure while browsing the Internet. That includes downloading the latest version of your web browser, making sure your operating system is also up to date, being able to recognize phishing attacks and more.
Image via Microsoft