Slate magazine, which admirably discloses its ownership by Microsoft in this article, says there is “A Simple Plan: Virus-proof your PC in 20 minutes, for free.”
The three steps they advocate – make sure security is sufficient on IE,
get the latest Windows Updates and search for spyware – surely make the
machine more reliable than if those steps were not taken. But that is
not enough.
I think author Paul Boutin missed the mark in not considering the
possibility that there are many other browsers out there – Opera,
Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox and others – that don’t suffer from the
many, many IE exploits and will meet the needs of most users. Also,
slipped in among those three steps was the off-hand mention of
antivirus software, which ought to be a mandatory requirement for all
systems.
Speaking of which, ComputerWorld reports four new Internet Explorer holes have been discovered.