Wednesday, November 16, 2005
MS Helps with the whole browser hijacking problem they helped cause
Can't blame them for trying... I'm a little disappointed that it doesn't go into a little bit more detail on ActiveX awareness, and what the user will see when IE detects or blocks suspicious software. For example, after setting the security settings in IE to "Medium" (as the page recommends), there will be new messages that IE will start showing. These will confuse the user who doesn't understand why their browser is acting differently all of a sudden. These are the usual two that will appear under the IE toolbars:
In my experience, if you tell a typical end-user that changing Setting X will help raise their security posture, and Setting X causes some behavioral changes that the user isn't expecting or didn't clearly understand, you're just asking for another support call. "Hi, I'm not sure if this is relevant, but now that I'm paranoid about security and about how IE can be hijacked, I just noticed these new messages that starting appearing in my browser whenever I visit my... work... related... sites." ¶ 11/16/2005 06:45:00 AM
Can't blame them for trying... I'm a little disappointed that it doesn't go into a little bit more detail on ActiveX awareness, and what the user will see when IE detects or blocks suspicious software. For example, after setting the security settings in IE to "Medium" (as the page recommends), there will be new messages that IE will start showing. These will confuse the user who doesn't understand why their browser is acting differently all of a sudden. These are the usual two that will appear under the IE toolbars:
In my experience, if you tell a typical end-user that changing Setting X will help raise their security posture, and Setting X causes some behavioral changes that the user isn't expecting or didn't clearly understand, you're just asking for another support call. "Hi, I'm not sure if this is relevant, but now that I'm paranoid about security and about how IE can be hijacked, I just noticed these new messages that starting appearing in my browser whenever I visit my... work... related... sites." ¶ 11/16/2005 06:45:00 AM
