Internet users has been warned by the media about the current security concerns of using Internet Explorer (IE) as a web browser on your computer. It is also reported that a few governments in the world including Germany and French has advised people to use alternative browsers such as Firefox and Safari to avoid the security threat.

However if you’re a big fan of IE and can’t live without it, you need to ensure that you’re using the latest version of IE, Internet Explorer 8. If you’re still using a earlier version, just upgrade it to the latest one.

You might be wondering how this potential risk could jeopardize your system. This threat involves something called an invalid ‘pointer reference’ within IE, which may allow attackers to enable remote code execution.

Internet Explorer users which still using older version may be tricked to visit certain websites which developed by attackers to take advantage of this exploit.

Phishing emails and spam IM messages for example may give users a false direction to the website. One way to ensure that you’re not ‘tricked’ into these websites is by not opening emails from unknown sender. Junk mail filter usually blocks unsolicited emails but sometimes one or two will escape to your Inbox. So, your judgement is still needed to avoid unnecessary risk.

And since the code would enable the attacker to gain similar access permission as current user, it is safer if you operate the computer using a standard user permission as this account would have less permisions, so do the attacker. This will prevent more destructive works to be done on your computer.