83% of the latest web browser features are completely unnecessary.

Web browsers are full of dangerous options that no one uses. Most computers are sold with pre-installed browsers, for example, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari, but these browsers are not configured by default for safe browsing.

Users are working on the Internet, but there, as stated on the US-Cert site, they may face a variety of computer problems due to various reasons, ranging from spyware installed without your knowledge to hackers who seize control of your computer.
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A complex balance is needed between the freedom to use new technological functions (such as options in a web browser) and at the same time the ability to “close the doors” for cyber-criminals.

But why set additional options if they are meaningless? 83% of new browser features are completely unnecessary , as shown in a study from the University of Illinois (USA) . In fact, only 1% of the 10,000 most popular web pages use these functions in any way, and the usefulness of many of them is not even proven.

A good example is Ambient Light Events (ALS) - this option allows you to show websites in different ways, adapting the brightness of the computer to the level of the surrounding illumination. Although it all sounds very cool, but only 14 out of 10,000 websites analyzed in this study introduced this option , with very few users who know about its existence.



Another story: Iframe . It has become a very popular HTML element that is used on many different types of sites: interactive areas on a web page allow you to embed part of another page on your web site (option known as embedding). At least half of the most popular websites use this technology, but at the same time it is blocked in 77% of cases for security reasons . In 2008, hackers “ distributed search results on the Internet with malicious iframe-code, which led to attacks such as iframe overlay in many well-known networks .” As a result, most social networks have stopped using this program.

Also noteworthy is the Vibration API application, which allows websites to control the vibration of devices ... if they decide to use them. Today, only 1 out of 10,000 most popular websites use this option , but functions remain available not only for developers of legitimate devices, but also for potential hackers who could use them for their own purposes, for example, to spy on Your conversations ( as is done here ).



It's hard enough to strike a balance between the benefits of the available options and the security measures, at least if we are talking about web browsers. For protection, you must have a reliable antivirus that can stop hackers trying to penetrate online holes.