An anonymous reader writes: To Firefox or to Chrome, that is the question. Most of you are probably the tech support guy/gal for your very non-techie, almost computer illiterate friends/relatives. You know they type: hopelessly wedded to IE on Windows XP/Vista/Win7; would gladly click on the "infect me" button on Facebook. After which you get a panicked call to help them get rid of this "Security Tool" that is trying to extort money from them. I just went through that scenario a few days ago. Well, not quite, the "infect me" part is a feeble attempt at humour, they have no idea how the malware came in.
So I am asked: what can I do to make sure this does not happen again? Hmmm... Bite my tongue. OK. This type of netizen will not get off Windows, so alternative OS's are out of the question. They are running anti-virus, not much good did it do. They can't afford the HW & SW costs of upgrading from XP to Win7. That leaves the "kick-me-in-the-behind" browser they are using. What can be done with that?
Well, Firefox with its multitide of security oriented add-ons comes to mind (noscript, ad-block, noflash, etc.). Except... it is way too intrusive for this type of users. They just want their browsers to work. The 'permit this, enable that' mode of operation is unacceptable.
What we are looking for then is a Windows-based browser that can stand on its own (default installation + common plug-ins) and be somewhat resilient to attack.
We can consider Google Chrome and it's sandbox security model, it looks awfully good. Firefox on the other hand has a pretty good but not exactly perfect security track record. And... no privilege separation; you own the browser and you own the filesystem (specially if the user is on XP as an administrator).
So, if you were to be asked... which browser can keep me safer? Given the constrains listed above, what would you tell your Windows-addicted friends? Use Firefox? Use Chrome? What the heck, somebody is bound to bring it up: use Opera? I am looking for an intelligent discussion on the security pros and cons of Chrome and Firefox, not a flame war. Let's see if the Slashdot community can deliver.