Mozilla Firefox
Firefox is designed keeping an eye on safety. There's even a bug bounty program. The popularity of Firefox keeps growing because of the high security standards, compared to IE. You can download Firefox here.
The browser is very safe since it lacks ActiveX support, though a plugin can be downloaded, automatically blocks most popups and is highly customizable. Besides, since it's not as popular as internet explorer people don't focus on developping exploits since the target audience is limited, though this is changing since Firefox is growing in popularity. To top it off, plugins adding even more security are available on the web. All this sounds very good but there are some downsides to Mozilla, though they are not security related:
- Firefox uses a lot of memory compared to, for example, IE
- It's a very minimal browser missing some features. You can download plugins for firefox here
- ActiveX is not supported (positive, but also negative for sites which use activex to function properly)
- Some pages don't render the way they should or don't render at all. This is not caused by Firefox, but by the people who built the site. A lot of coders don't comply with international standards and build sites targeting IE only, thus eliminating Mozilla users from their sites. To display those pages in IE automatically you can download a plugin here
- The software code is visible to anyone, thus Mozilla targeted malicious code can be made
Pro's
- Highly customizable
- High security
- Fast browser
Con's
- Highly customizable (malicious plugins can be installed, though the user should do this)
- Not all pages display the way they should (this is mostly caused by webmasters using IE only tags)
Modify your safety settings and a few basic rules to keep in mind while surfing the web.
Note: to read a list of found, and patched, security holes go here