German government urges public to stop using Internet Explorer

Re:German government urges public to stop using Internet Exp... by philippK on Tuesday September 18, 2012 @05:18PM (#4540563)

Yeah well this has been all over the primetime news shows on german television. They all aired with the warning to not use IE / switch to a different browswr.

While this might not mean much to the average user of HN (read: tech literate) - i think it IS quite a big deal for "ordinary" computer users.

I think such warnings, from an official government body no less, will be heeded by many who don't know much and "just want to be safe"

Meanwhile MS choses to tell people that it "is not that bad" and that "not many users will be affected" and no word on when a patch is coming. This despite the fact that all current MS OSes (xp,vista,7) are exposed - is a PR disaster for MS.

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Re:German government urges public to stop using Internet Exp... by DasIch on Tuesday September 18, 2012 @05:30PM (#4540627)

Obviously MS is downplaying it but on the other side the BSI creates a huge stir to create the image that it is useful in someway and to avoid becoming an obscure agency that is mentioned only in passing in a couple of tech news articles. That's not to say that what they are doing is bad it's just that their are two sides and the ordinary computer user probably has still no idea what's going on.

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Re:German government urges public to stop using Internet Exp... by killerpopiller on Tuesday September 18, 2012 @05:43PM (#4540687)

the BSI isn't an obscure agency, it fills it's function well - e.g. ISO 27001 vs IT-Grundschutz certification, or newsletter with sec. warnings

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Re:German government urges public to stop using Internet Exp... by justincormack on Tuesday September 18, 2012 @07:03PM (#4541012)

Can you explain in more detail what it does?

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Re:German government urges public to stop using Internet Exp... by heja2009 on Tuesday September 18, 2012 @08:49PM (#4541438)

The BSI is in the German media fairly regularly with advice about private and commercial information security and has a good reputation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Office_for_Information_...

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Re:German government urges public to stop using Internet Exp... by quonn on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @12:43PM (#4544293)

Since it doubles as the German equivalent of the NSA, I don't think it is worried about justifying its existence.

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