Opposition to Internet Explorer 6 snowballs

The UK government still uses IE6 despite the security implications

Nearly 5,000 people have signed an online petition urging government departments to dump Internet Explorer 6 (IE6).

IE6 contains well known security flaws but is still being used extensively in Whitehall, including at the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Health and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The security problems of using the outdated browser were highlighted when it was revealed that Chinese hackers recently exploited a flaw in IE6 in an attempt to infiltrate the corporate systems of Google, Adobe and several other firms.

Government use of IE6 is also a problem because companies building web sites have to include support for the browser so that the departments can view their sites.

"IE6 'end of life' was extended to 2014 by governments and business not ready or willing to upgrade," says the petition posted by Dan Frydman from Inigo Media, a company that builds web sites.

"This cycle should be broken, and innovation and security given their proper place."

Frydman argues that the UK government should follow the example set by the French and German governments, which have been encouraging people to upgrade from IE6 to a newer version of the software or a different browser altogether.

In a call with Frydman, he added further clarification to the reason behind the peitition.

"The main difficulty that I see is that government departments expect IE6 will be supported as a matter of course when developers do work for them," he said.

"More modern browsers have the ability to do more things. It's a way to make web sites easier to use. The government spends money creating web sites for outreach programmes, but often government staff can't use the sites properly as they don't have the right browser to access them."

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security firm Sophos, pointed to an increasing groundswell of opinion against IE6.

"There are numerous web sites explaining to webmasters how to use pop-up messages urging visitors running IE6 to update. [There are] even Facebook groups dedicated to IE6's destruction," he said in a blog post.

"Just a few days ago it was revealed that Google would no longer be supporting IE6 for its Google Docs and Google Sites services, with other features such as Gmail dropping IE6 support later this year.

"IE6 was launched in 2001, and should probably have been killed off some time ago."