NSS Labs Study Finds Internet Explorer Most Secure Against Click Fraud

An NSS Labs study conducted over 175 days has found that Internet Explorer is the most secure browser when it comes to protecting against Click Fraud.

Key findings from the NSS Labs report include:

• Click fraud itself causes minimal direct harm to the typical end user as the ultimate target is the ad buyer.
• Consumer and corporate users, however, are infected by additional malware as a by-product of click fraud installation.
• Click fraud catch rates are Chrome 1.6%, Firefox 0.8%, Internet Explorer 96.6%, and Safari 0.7%.
• Services are available that may help ad buyers identify click fraud.  However, service contracts with ad networks may contain clauses that restrict ad buyers’ ability to recover damages for click fraud.
• The average lifespan of a click fraud URL was 32 hours with over 50% expiring within 54 hours.

The results show Internet Explorer ahead by an incredibly sizable portion – leaving Chrome in second place at a measly 1.6%, Firefox at .8%, and Safar at .7%.

Click Fraud is a type of attack that really hits advertisers, not so much the users. That’s why it’s so surprising that Chrome, a product driven by Google, is receiving such a poor score.

I’m also not about to call NSS labs out but they sure do seem to have a lot of reports indicating Internet Explorer is the most secure browser or rather they only seem to release reports about things that IE excels at (and often by massive margins). It would be really nice to have another independent research group test things out. When Accuvant did a study comparing browsers (NOT that this study was unbias) they found basically no difference between IE and Chrome in terms of detecting malware, which was contrary to a study by NSS labs that showed IE outperforming Chrome by about 60%.

Take it with a grain of salt but it’s worth noting.