Why you’re being told not to use Internet Explorer and how to fix IE

Millions of Internet Explorer users are one malicious click away from having their computers hijacked.

“This affects Internet Explorer versions going all the way back to IE 6, which upwards of a decade old,” says GeekWire’s Todd Bishop. “The new thing is that the hackers figured out a way to exploit it. And there’s a group out there that’s reported to be snooping on government installations and trying to use this to essentially gain control and sort of do surveillance on some groups.”

Internet Explorer still has over 20 percent of the browser market share, and is especially still popular in office settings.

There are three ways to fix the bug.

First, uninstall Adobe Flash.

“Flash is still very pervasive,” says Bishop. Even though the industry has been shifting towards HTML 5, which means not every website is dependent on Flash, uninstalling the program will mean that you’re going to limit what you can do online.

You could also switch to Firefox or Chrome. But Bishop says that is easier said than done.

“You’re talking about human behavior here, and people are creatures of habit and so this is something that can be very tough,” he says. “It’s like turning a giant ship and it just doesn’t happen overnight.”

Many companies have software that are only compatible with Explorer. For them, it’s going to take a bit more diligence.

“Because Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was dominate – especially seven or eight years ago back in the heyday of Windows – a lot of corporate web applications rely on Internet Explorer and don’t run properly with their browser still so that’s a major issue here. That’s one of the issues why it’s such a problem, because people in many cases have to use Internet Explorer to get their work done.”

There is also a mode in Internet Explorer called “enhanced security configuration” and Microsoft recommends having it on. They say by doing that it will, at least in some ways, lessen the possibility of being attacked.