The Security Mentor

Now that SP2 is trickling out to people who've turned on Automatic Updates (log in as Administrator and go to Start/Settings/Control Panel/Automatic Updates), is it safe to resume using Internet Explorer instead of Firefox?

No.

The security firm Secunia just put out a warning about a problem that affects fully patched systems.

You may be able to protect yourself against this particular problem but there aren't enough details out yet to give you sound advice. Definitely don't drag anything from Internet Explorer to your Startup folder even (especially!) if you get email with a convincing story about why you should. But this problem doubtless has relatives.

If you don't like Firefox, try downloading Opera(free with ads, US$39 without) and looking through the tutorial.

Why do things like this keep happening? And is Internet Explorer("IE") really worse than others? After all, other browsers have security problems too.

Microsoft wanted IE to be a way to run programs on your computer from your company's internal network or even from inside your computer. Running programs on your computer is dangerous, so Microsoft tried to set up different rules for different locations on the Web. Unfortunately there were zillions of places to check those rules and zillions of ways to trick the rules. So far even a large motivated company like Microsoft hasn't been able to plug all the holes. Other browers were designed to loook at Web pages, so they have fewer ways to go wrong.