Most everybody now knows that Firefox is the new favorite browser amongst those in the know. One of the major reasons this is the case is due to security. Internet Explorer is infamously prone to security problems, and one of the major reasons this is so is ActiveX. ActiveX is a technology which allows the web browser to install and run programs on your machine. The thought behind it was to increase the interactivity between the internet and your PC, and anybody who has used the Windows Update service knows the benefit of it. However, it also opens your PC up to security problems, and anybody who has used IE who has experience the joy of a website installing a bunch of spyware to their PC knows this all too well. Several months back I was doing some research on a client’s competitor site and all of a sudden my PC had installation windows popping up with no option to stop them. After all was said and done, I had a few new icons running in my taskbar, changes to the registry, a rewritten homepage and search feature, etc. This brought on my switch to Firefox.

The point of this is to disable ActiveX on Internet Explorer. This will go a long way in making IE more secure for you. To do this, go to Tools > Internet Options > Security > Custom Level. Scroll down to ActiveC and Disable it. Those sites which used ActiveX will no longer operate, but what you can do is add these sites to your Trust site list and they will then continue to operate as normal.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below: