Now that Firefox has gained so much market share from IE — it’s being targeted more by spyware and pop-up ad writers. Great.
The upshot of spyware writers’ newfound attraction to Mozilla, Arrott predicts, will be that in the next six months or so computer security guides will stop recommending that people switch from IE to halt intrusions.
It’s not just spyware that users of alternate browsers are complaining about. Much-reviled pop-up and pop-under ads are also making it past blocking software, a trend that Matina Fresenius, chairman and CEO of ad-blocking software developer Panicware, attributed to the fact that most older programs were made with IE in mind. “I’m not sure if it’s specifically that advertisers are finding ways to sneak by ad blockers in alternate browsers. I think it’s just that most ad blockers don’t support the alternate browsers,” said Fresenius, whose company launched a pop-up stopper last week that is designed to work with both IE and alternate browsers like Mozilla, Opera and Netscape.
Mac users are also complaining about a rise in intrusive advertising. In the past few months in particular, Mac users have reported a dramatically higher incidence of unwanted pop-up and pop-under ads, said Ben Wilson, senior editor of the Mac site MacFixIt. Typically, Wilson said, Mac users are subjected to fewer unwanted pop-up and pop-under ads than PC users. He attributes this tendency to security features in Mac OS X’s architecture and to its smaller market share.
Still, Wilson said, a handful of ad delivery firms openly boast about their ability to subvert traditional blocking systems, and Mac users are feeling the effects of some aggressive advertiser tactics.
Now what will be interesting is how quickly the FF development community responds to the problem. On the bright side, it can’t be any slower than Micro$oft …