Know your browser, know the risks

Webmaster (Online Communications)

01795 417149

jasonwignall@swale.gov.uk

Last updated on 17 May 2010

The Danger

The internet is full of dangers and the biggest danger may be the program you are using to view this page.

Whenever you go onto the internet you use an application called a web browser and there are many of these about. Every time you visit a page on our website we log which web browser (among other, non-identifiable, data such as the page you visited and when) you are using to view that page. We use this information to make sure that any changes we make to our website work on the browsers you are using.

We have just released our new website and we have been checking to see what browsers are being used. When we saw what people were using it is fair to say it concerned us.

As it says above there are many dangers on the internet and the most common fall into 2 categories:

Using cleverly written emails / fake websites to make you hand over information that can be sold-on or used for illegal activities. This is called a "phishing" attack.
Utilising any un-patched vulnerabilities in your web browser to compromise your computers security, so they can read / write and control your computer.

All the makers of web browsers are well aware of these issues and they work solidly to make sure than any holes are patched as quickly as possible. If you always update your browser to the latest version, and install all your updates when they arrive, then you shouldn't have much to worry about.

There are two problems that these companies have to contend with though:

People not accepting the updates
People using versions of their operating systems / web browsers that are no longer supported
People not accepting that they need to keep on top of their computers security

And this is why we are posting this message, too many people are using web browsers that are either too old and unsupported or are simply not taking enough steps to make sure they are secure. This is not an operating system issue though. We are not singling out Microsoft Windows users, or Apple MacOSX users, this problem affects all the operating systems.

We have very simple guidance for you:

If you are not using the supported versions of your web browser then you are not going to be properly protected against security vulnerabilities. Make sure you get the most up to date web browser you can, they are free and are usually very easy to install or upgrade.

To help you work out if you are using a supported browser we have supplied this handy list of browsers we recommend you use on Windows and MacOSX:

Microsoft Windows users

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (Visit the Microsoft website)
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, only if your version of Windows does not support upgrading to Explorer 7 or 8, in which case you should be looking at upgrading your computer as there is a chance your version of Windows may not be supported now either.
Mozilla Firefox 3.5 (Visit the Firefox website)
Mozilla Firefox 3.0.15 (only supported by Mozilla until January 2010)
Opera 10.01 (Visit the Opera website)
Apple Safari 4.0.3 (Visit the Apple website)
Google Chrome (Visit the Chrome website)

Apple MacOSX users

Apple Safari (Visit the Apple website)
Opera 10.01 (Visit the Opera website)
Mozilla Firefox 3.5.4 (Visit the Firefox website)

There are so many different versions of Linux out there (Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc) that the list would be too long. Our advice for you would be to make sure you are using the most recent release of your operating system, you should visit their website to find out what the most up-to-date version is.

To find out what web browser you are running is usually as simple as clicking Help and then About in the menu, failing that just visit the maker's website of your current browser and install the most recent version you can.