Microsoft campaign urges IE6 users to upgrade

Internet Explorer 6 is nine years old

Microsoft has stepped up pressure on customers still running Internet Explorer 6 with a marketing campaign likening the product to stale milk.

A special web page aimed mainly at Australian customers asks the question: 'You wouldn't drink nine year-old milk, so why use a nine year-old browser?'

The page goes on to explain that the security features on IE6, although cutting edge at the time, have become outdated.

Microsoft quotes research from NSS Labs stating that the latest version of its browser, IE8, can stop socially engineered malware 85 per cent of the time, compared with 29 per cent for Firefox 3 and Safari 4, and 17 per cent for Chrome.

IE6 continues to be used by more than 15 per cent of the global population, according to some estimates, often because it is bundled with the ever-popular Windows XP operating system.

Microsoft has made repeated attempts to get its customers to upgrade, perhaps aware of the bad publicity generated by stories of hackers exploiting its security vulnerabilities.

For example, French and German authorities urged citizens to dump Internet Explorer altogether after a high profile flaw allowed Chinese hackers to infiltrate the systems of Google and numerous other companies earlier this year.