Firefox Users Most Secure on Internet, Study Reveals

"Mozilla Firefox fans might rest a little easier these days after a study released Tuesday revealed that its users are most secure on the Internet. Altogether, the study found that less than 60 percent (59.1) of people use up-to-date, fully patched Web browsers. Failure update browsers exponentially increases the chance for remote attacks executed by hackers, the study found. Firefox users were far and away the most likely to use the latest version, with an overwhelming 83.3 percent running an updated browser on any given day. However, despite Firefox's single click integrate auto-update functionality, 16.7 percent of Firefox users still continue access the Web with an outdated version of the browser, researchers said.The study also revealed that the majority of Safari users (65.3) percent were likely to use the latest version of the browser between December 2007 and June 2008, after Safari version 3 became available. Meanwhile, Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)'s Internet Explorer users ranked last in terms of safe browsing. Between January 2007 and June 2008, less than half of IE users -- 47.6 percent -- were running the most secure browser version during the same time period. Opera ranked slightly higher than IE, with about 56 percent of users who said that they have applied the latest version of the browser to their computer. Of the four browsers surveyed, Opera ranked last in popularity, with a just 11 million users that comprise .8 percent of the marketshare."

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