Should you use two browsers on the internet
May 1st, 2007 Posted in Blog PostAn article over at ComputerWorld reports that Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP, uses two browsers to surf the internet to avoid getting caught in cross-site scripting traps.
Running a single browser is simply “insane,” claimed Lerdorf during a keynote address last week at the MySQL Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., because of “nine out of 10 Web sites having cross-site scripting holes.” That includes the portal of his current employer, Yahoo Inc., where Lerdorf is an infrastructure architecture engineer. To protect himself, Lerdorf uses Apple Inc.’s Safari to surf personal sites and Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox for everything else.
I have a suggestion, don’t store personal information in your browser like passwords and delete any and all cookies when the browser closes. This is easy to do in Firefox by clicking “Tools | Options…” selecting the “Privacy” tab and putting a check next to “Always clear my private data before closing Firefox”. If it’s not stored it can’t be stolen. I always close my browser after making a financial transaction on the internet. This clears the session cookie and I never save passwords in my browser, no need for two browsers.
Of course, you’ll have to log into those forums every time but I think that’s a small price to pay for security.
