A new study from Switzerland claims that Firefox users are the safest surfers, while Internet Explorer users are the worst at keeping their browser's online security up to date.

The study, conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in collaboration with Google and IBM between January 2007 and June 2008, focused on users' web browser preferences and online behaviour.

IE users highest risk

Of all the respondents in the study, over 83 per cent Firefox users deployed the latest – and hence, most secure - version of the browser.

Compare this with the 65 per cent of Apple's Safari users, 56 per cent of Opera users and a piffling 48 per cent of Internet Explorer users.

Whatever browser takes your fancy, there really is one lesson to be learned from the survey – make sure you regularly update to the latest version.

Best before dates for browsers?

Perhaps we should go back to suggesting browser developers publicise some form of 'best before' dates on older versions of browsers – as we reported last week?

The study also estimated that Internet Explorer had 1.1 billion users or 78.3 per cent of the total worldwide browser market and that Firefox had 227 million users or 16.1 per cent, Safari 48 million users or 3.4 per cent, and Opera just 11 million users or 0.8 per cent.

Compare this with Mozilla's own recent claims that Firefox now has 19 per cent of the total worldwide browser market, following the successful and much-hyped launch of Firefox 3.