Lucy_J7

Some of the shopping sites ask to run "ietag.dll" but does anybody know what this does, why it is needed and is it any risk.

Nigel

Looks like a dll file for IE.

I would guess you are running windows, and not a bang up-to-date version.

go to http://www.firefox.com and download firefox 2.0

if the site still asks for it........................... avoid.

Nigel

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Lucy_J7

Windows XP Pro version 5.1
I have activated automatic updates
Will try Firefox and see what happens
Thanks Lucy

admirer5577

Firefox is great. Now the latest IE seem to catch up but I still believe that Firefox is attacked less by evil minds. Simply because it isn't that fun to make life miserable for only 1% or so when IE probably has 95% of the users.

jmc

I use the Firefox browser all the time, I'm using it right now. I use it under Windows and Linux both -- same program, works the same way under both OS'es. I heartily recommend it to anyone.

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Ozzard

To answer the original question, the official ietag.dll is a Microsoft browser helper object that deals with smart tags in Word when content is loaded into IE. It's not in Office 2007 (depending on what you have loaded on your box). The thing being offered from the sites as ietag.dll may or may not be legitimate; personally, I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

As for the "get Firefox" mafia... I'm a Web developer, and this box has IE7, Firefox, Netscape and Opera on it. They're now much of a muchness; there are starting to be exploits of Firefox*, and the impact can be similar to the exploits of IE. Opera is still relatively exploit-free, due to its tiny market share. If you feel uncomfortable with your current browser, go ahead and download a new one in order to compare - but it seems like overkill to download it "just because".

- Peter

* Happy to discuss relative security of browsers, open source (potentially) being innately more secure than proprietary and so on - but it's probably worth doing so via PM or at least via a separate thread, rather than cluttering this one.

Lucy_J7

I have Office 2003
It is the following site that wants to use ietag.dll
http://www.alternative-footwear.co.uk/shop.html
and they say it is from Microsoft Corp.

I did temporarily install it without any obvious problems.
In the add-on manager it does say the publisher is Microsoft Corp. So I am not too worried on security unless someone tells me otherwise. But what benefit is there in it being installed?