Opera Widget Keeps You Up-to-Date on Browser Security
Posted on July 12th, 2008 |
An article titled Check the Security Status of Browsers with Opera Widget reads a bit like something coming directly out of the Opera marketing department. The article covers an Opera widget called Stay Secure that refreshes based on the latest data from Secunia every hour to show you a graph like the following indicating the security levels of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Konqueror:
I say the article reads a bit like a release from the Opera marketing department, because assuming Opera views Firefox as a competitor, the widget screenshot shown in the article and statements like “the test showed that Firefox 3 was [the] most vulnerable one and Opera the least” seem a little biased. Was this actually a test, or did it happen to be the state of security at that moment the screenshot was taken? For example, above it looks like Internet Explorer and Konqueror are the two most vulnerable.
Regardless, it seems like a neat little widget for those who like to follow web browser security closely, as long as you’re willing to use Opera to track it, since the widget is Opera-only at present. For those like me who dabble among various browsers, this isn’t an issue.
Anyone know of similar features/extensions for other web browsers?
Tags: Add-ons, Extensions, Firefox, Firefox 3, Internet Explorer, Konqueror, Marketing, Opera, Safari, Secunia, Security, Stay Secure, Widgets
2 Responses
Using
Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.16 on 
Windows XP
> I say the article reads a bit like a release from the Opera marketing department, because assuming Opera views Firefox as a competitor, the widget screenshot shown in the article and statements like “the test showed that Firefox 3 was [the] most vulnerable one and Opera the least” seem a little biased.
actually, that statement was not biased, at that time at least. Take notice that the “security level” shown at any time depends on the most severe vulnerability at that time, not the total number of vulnerabilities of a browser. So Firefox at that time had one highly critical vulnerability, the (in)famous one discovered at the Firefox 3 launch day, while IE had 10 less severe vulnerabilities, thus Firefox was rated the least secure at that time.
Now with the release of Firefox 3.01 and 2.0.0.16, that single (in)famous vulnerability is finally patched, so Firefox is now at the same level of Opera as one of the two most secure browsers in the world, for now at least.
Using
Mozilla Firefox 3.0 on 
Linux
Thanks for clarifying. Maybe we can just call it “opportune timing.”