Continuing with my anti-Internet Explorer tirade, today’s link is courtesy of Microsoft themselves. They’ve helpfully put up a support page with some tips on how to avoid being hijacked. My favorite? They suggest:

The most effective step that you can take to help protect yourself from malicious hyperlinks is not to click them. Rather, type the URL of your intended destination in the address bar yourself. By manually typing the URL in the address bar, you can verify the information that Internet Explorer uses to access the destination Web site. To do so, type the URL in the Address bar, and then press ENTER.

. That’s right folks, no problem. Just type that 600 character URL ebay just sent you by hand yourself, no problem! Don’t click on the URL, a fundamental function of your web browser because, well, Microsoft can’t be bothered to fix a defect in their product.

It’s so pathetically absurd. Anyone who’s just read the proceeding paragraph and is still using IE needs to have their head examined. No, wait, actually, they need to have their computer forcibly taken away from them, they’re clearly not capable of operating one in a responsible manner.

There’s an opportunity for a class action lawsuit by all the people who’ve ended up buying bogus merchandise or had their checking or paypal accounts drained or discovered a lot of Ukranian hotel rooms charged on their credit card all of the sudden. Any ambulance chasing lawyers reading this are advised to get right on it 😉