Some time ago, maybe nearly 10 years ago, I remember Microsoft being challenged about the security of their Internet Explorer and giving the response that their browser should only be used for trusted websites ... which is to say, "never use it on the Internet," -- I started back then advising people to ween themselves of that browser, and before you laugh, they have just said the same thing again today reported in My Way News:

The infection ... appears to take advantage of three separate flaws with Microsoft products and can be difficult to detect.

Stephen Toulouse, a security program manager at Microsoft, said software updates to fix two of them had been released in April, but the third flaw was newly discovered and had no patch available yet.

He recommended that computer owners obtain the latest security updates ...

Pardon my observation here, but didn't he just say in the previous paragraph no such security patch is available? Ok, I thought so -- so I wasn't just seeing things. Anyway, minor point because it gets way better ...

...users should also turn up security settings on Microsoft's Internet Explorer browsers to the highest levels.

Users could also turn off the "JavaScript" feature on their Microsoft browsers, though doing so could cripple functions on some sites.

This reminds me of the old 'cure' for air-sickness that says, "Lay flat on your back, place a large stone on your belly ... and stay out of airplanes!"

Anyone who's ever used MSIE with the max security settings already knows it's not much fun, so basically this is a remasked restatement of "Only use it for trusted websites" and therein a very curious side question emerges: Who can you trust online?

According to the BBC, the news may be a little worse than the US media are willing to admit ...

The threat of infection is so high because the code created to exploit the loophole has somehow been placed on many popular websites.

Experts say the list of compromised sites involves banks, auction and price comparison firms and is growing fast.

All in the Family

Something else in the BBC edition: Where do you actually get this nasty bit of infection? ...

What is known is that any Windows 2000 Server that does not have the MS04-011 security update installed and is running Internet Information Server could be at risk.

... Infected servers are adding a malicious chunk of Javascript to all the web, gif and jpg files served up to anyone browsing the sites they host.

So, just to recap, the browser that has been problematic and costly for over a decade due to its security flaws is once again yet again security news, and this time it is being fed by the same vendor's webservers ...

And people still use it? Amazing. I can only conclude therefore that people use MSIE out of some kind of technology masochism.

Thus I probably don't need to tell you this because you either already know, or, for the MSIE users, you won't care: The virus does not affect Macintosh versions of Internet Explorer, nor does it spread through non-Microsoft browsers like Mozilla and Opera.