I've never been attacked by either one. You will find that viruses, spyware, and hackers are more easily able to exploit the vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. This is simply because it has the highest market share and has been around longer.

Generally the less popular a piece of software is the safer it is to use it. The simple reason for this is that if you are designing a virus to take over a computer, you want it to infect as many computers as possible. Designing a virus for I.E. has a much higher success rate for 2 reasons. First off the sheer number of IE users is larger, and 2ndly the types of users that download alternate browsers also tend to be the type that know more about how to avoid malicious sites. The result of this is that the vast majority of viruses are written to take advantage of flaws in IE. IE 6.0 was notably more prone to infection than firefox because of some of the proprietary controls that microsoft had put in it (ActiveX for example), and then just the age and infrequency of the updates. IE 7.0 seems to be better, but it is a new peice of software that will get attacked more as it's popularity grows. In the end no piece of software is totally secure. As a software programmer I can tell you that totally secure web browsing will never exist. If you are really concerned about security and viruses the browser is less important than having a good virus checker (I prefer NOD32 here) and being smart about which sites you go to (avoid free porn, warez, and free screen savers for example :D). I primarly use firefox (though i actually have IE 5, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0, opera, netscape installed for testing on this machine) due to the feature set offered. It's extensions allow me to do things like turning off flash movies, blocking advertisements on a page, examining the javascript on the page, etc. The breadth and depth of extentiosn availible to firefox has become quite impressive. I even have a version of firefox installed that lets me do totally anonymous browsing (for downloading/uploading torrents and the like). Both firefox and IE have and will continue to have flaws. I generally consider firefox the safer browser because it's more open to the public about what flaws exist (microsoft is notoriously closed mouthed) and generally has a shorter turn around time fixing serious vulnerabilities than microsoft. If you are using IE 6.0 definatly at least upgrade to 7.0, for any web browser it is important to keep the software updated to the latest version. Other than that i'd say that both of them are perfectly fine browsers as long as you keep your virus software up to date and are smart about what you download/visit/install on your computer. Most viruses get onto a computer by being installed as part of a download, not through a vulnerability in your browser.

IE 7 has some security flaws. At current, I consider Firefox to be safer to use. But always back your browser up with a good malware removal tool (including all flavors of anti-virus/anti-spyware programs and suites) and firewall.

Mozilla. why? cause when I first got this computer I used IE and in a month had four viruses.

mozilla firefox, prevents more popups and such. never had a virus with it. internet explorer many viruses.

Firefox

Firefox. Many hackers prefer to target the largest percentage of PCs out there for maximum damage. The vast majority of PCs are used by lazy and/or non-PC-savvy people, so they will run IE with no added efforts at security beyond what Microsoft automatically installs and configures. Therefore, the easiest and most plentiful targets will be running IE. And Firefox intentionally does not run certain types of code that have been identified as exploitable weaknesses. It's impossible for many of the normal tricks of the cracker trade to work on Firefox and those that do won't usually hit an IE machine. Another thing is that many of the people who run Firefox are savvy enough to use additional security measures and they don't always run the same ones. And very few will run Norton or McAfee as those are far from the best out there. Is it worth the hassle to learn to overcome everything under the sun, or would you rather code something quick and simple that will still work on over 80% of the computers in the world?

I would say Mozilla Firefox because almost 100% of all virus infested web pages are designed to take advantage of Internet explorers security flaws. I stick with mozilla Firefox for everyday browsing like reading email and downloading files. Internet explorer i only use when firefox doesn't work with a certain website. I also email the website owner explaining to them that there is more than ONE browser on the planet and that internet explorer is a piece of junk from the moon.

sadly internet explorer is firefox was good the first year or so it came out but now it is just a target for hackers, crackers and what have you i use Opera on whatever i can

Firefox. It has better computer protection.

Hello Friend, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer are the browser to view Internet web pages. Firefox is created by Open Source Community while IE is created by Microsoft. Current latest version of Firefox is 1.5.x while of IE is 6 (Microsoft is coming up with IE 7 to protect its market from other browsers...beta is already launched). Firefox does all what IE can do but it has some extra artifacts like tabbed browsing(means you can open work on multiple webpages while opening only a single instance of Firefox which is not possible in IE where for different simultaneous pages you need to open multiple instance of IE). Firefox has inbuilt download manager to manage download of stuff..so no need to use third party software. IE also has download system but it dont have pause facility for pasing and later downloading remaining part. firefox has facilty to add third party component written in any lanugugae like you can use ActiveX or JavaBeans to enhance property of Firefox. now the important point the assumption(or say statistics) for current time is that firefox is most secured browser at present. for security point i can say as IE used for long time and also most used browser so hackers know the flaw in IE while firefox is new and also its just growing so hackers need time to break its code. And for .NET Application as both the browser supports ActiveX Component so it wont give any problem in either of them.