Some stupid individual...

[mava]

...that works Tech Support somewhere - presumably Bumble****, New Mexico - informed my mom that Google Chrome is the devil. She would rather use MSN or even IE to browse rather than touch Chrome. I installed it on their computers, and fortunately she doesn't know how to uninstall it. My dad doesn't care in the least. Anyways, this guy tells her that of all the browsers, Google Chrome will actively give you a virus if you use it, and to avoid it at all costs.

Why would anyone think this? I just don't understand. I get really frustrated with my mother because she always freaks out when I try (and succeed, mwahaha) to use Chrome on her computer.

Edit: Of course I use Chrome on my own computer, @guy that asked.

[bohapjut]

i use chrome and didnt get the virus. ? u use an antivirus program? i recomend avast it's free

[Sykol]

MS tech support, I presume?

[Licarius]

is Chrome > Firefox??

why...?

[Propane]

IE is the true devil browser.

[bohapjut]

Netscape FTW!

[OhpUldum]

Sounds like a very misguided individual.

[mava]

MS tech support, I presume?

Hadn't thought of that... Good speculation!

[Xuvial]

MS tech support, I presume?

That would be hilarious indeed!
But yeah, as far as I know Chrome has nothing of the sort, most likely just a load of bullshit from someone who hates Chrome.

is Chrome > Firefox??

why...?

Both have their positives. Chrome is very light and zippy, I could see it out-performing Firefox when installed on a typical HDD. It's more convenient for quick browsing, especially on laptops where Firefox can tend to eat up a lot of memory and CPU when several tabs are open.

I like my browsers extension-heavy and functional so I stick with Firefox...but with an SSD and my current computer specs I have failed to notice ANY performance differences between Chrome, IE and Firefox, everything is instant anyway : /

[Eon Drache]

My mom's bf thinks google.com gives viruses... of course it does if you visit links that give them. The site itself does not. Same thing for google chrome vs any other browser... Visit a bad site and you'll get that virus no matter what browser you use.

[Xuvial]

Visit a bad site and you'll get that virus no matter what browser you use.

There's no site which can just SHOVE a virus into your PC without your interaction whatsoever. Most active-monitoring antivirus/firewalls programs should already have a definition ready to quarantine such a thing.

Unless you're unlucky enough to run into a freshly-developed virus site, in which case yes, you're in deep poop till definitions come out to fix that (or you find a way to remove it yourself, or you reformat your drives).

[Auralian]

At the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver BC, hackers were invited to find and exploit holes in modern browsers. A popular target for hackers at this year’s conference was Safari on a Mac — definitely the lowest hanging fruit.

Charlie Miller explains that it’s not whether a product has holes (all of them do), its how easy it is to exploit those holes — and on a Mac, it’s very simple:

It’s clear that all three browsers (Safari, IE and Firefox) have bugs. Code execution holes everywhere. But that’s only half the equation. The other half is exploiting it. There’s almost no hurdle to jump through on Mac OS X.

He did mention, in his interview with Ryan Naraine, that Chrome was pretty much in another league. Their “sandbox” makes it extremely difficult to exploit — not only do you need to find a problem, but you also have to figure out how to get out of their Sandbox (an environment that has no access to anything on the computer).

There are bugs in Chrome but they’re very hard to exploit. I have a Chrome vulnerability right now but I don’t know how to exploit it. It’s really hard. The’ve got that sandbox model that’s hard to get out of. With Chrome, it’s a combination of things — you can’t execute on the heap, the OS protections in Windows and the Sandbox.

I might have this bug and I might be able to get code execution. But now you’r ein a sandbox and you have no permissions to do anything. You need another bug to get out of the sandbox. Now you need two bugs and two exploits. That raises the bar.

No hackers took on Chrome at the conference, simply because everything else was easier.

I use SRWare Iron which is based of Chromium and taken to a even higher level, as far as the google search engine, all the do is spy on you so they can tailor the ads you see. Refer to the ongoing court cases they seem to be popping up at random lately.

[Xuvial]

Wow, that was an interesting read about Chrome's "sandbox" model. Maybe that's how it manages to be so light on system resources? I know Firefox has a growing list of exploits (especially with Flash) but yeah, keep your antivirus updated. Viruses are always around, it's not a matter of IF you'll get infected, it's a matter of WHEN.
I felt invincible with Norton's Corporate Edition for almost 6 years and then it finally let me down, my WoW characters were cleaned-out. Well no, it managed to quarantine the trojans - but AFTER the damage had already been done. I was like "wtf? y u take so long to pick up virus Norton?".

Using MS Security Essentials now.

[Simca]

MS Security Essentials is fine.

Also, this is a great article if you want details on browser performance and standards: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...tml5,3013.html

If you look through all the tests though, you see that IE isn't nearly AS bad as it used to be. It's clearly not the browser of choice for security or for performance (and definitely not for compatibility), but it is reasonable.

[Deleted]

Wow, that was an interesting read about Chrome's "sandbox" model. Maybe that's how it manages to be so light on system resources?

No. That sandboxing model actually increases the resource usage - particularly noticeable when a large amount of tabs are active.

IE has utilized Sandboxing since IE7.

[Wargon]

I used to work tech support calls, I applied for the job because I know enough to do minor tech support, which would help right? yea... they have absolutely no tech knowledge at all, they follow programs that promt them with what questions to ask the caller, and then choose the answers with multiple choice untill its resolved, or they have to escalate it to a actual tech guy, which is fine, if that works it works, but from my experiance everybody who does it seems to think that they should be giving out tech support since they were a tech guy.

I had coworkers that were telling people who called things like "you internet wont connect because you are using firefox and windows computers only work with internet explorer, if you try a differnent one, the computer wont let you connect." and much much morse than that (especially when it came to people calling with Vista, or Macs)

[Beasty]

Any browser gives you viruses if you are complete dingbat.

[vesseblah]

If you look through all the tests though, you see that IE isn't nearly AS bad as it used to be. It's clearly not the browser of choice for security or for performance (and definitely not for compatibility), but it is reasonable.

Pfft... IE9 falls behind in ACID3 test by about 4% so it's fairly well compatible today and you will not run into any web sites that will not be usable. Also IE9 is currently safer than either Firefox or Safari (faster bug fixing). Safari is currently the weakest link in security, as it is the easiest to hack and most bugged of the mainstream browsers.

[Blackmist]

There's no site which can just SHOVE a virus into your PC without your interaction whatsoever.

I thought that too, but it can happen. The browser itself is fairly innocent in all this (old versions of IE excepted), but the plugins you have, things like Java, Flash, Acrobat Reader... They can contain vulnerabilities. Whatever it was skipped around AVG, so I won't use that any more. It was in Firefox as well, but I honestly don't think that matters when the plugins have holes.

I switched to Chrome because it has it's own PDF viewer, and keeps Flash up to date. That's 2 holes closed right there. It's probably about as safe as you can get without using an OS that nobody else uses.

[Deleted]

is Chrome > Firefox??

why...?

Firefox is extremely heavy, slow and prone to random crashes and start up failures.