A real survey has managed to back aspects of hoax report earlier this year which claimed that people who used Internet Explorer had a lower IQ than those using other browsers.

Projection Point decided to carry out a poll to compare the risk intelligence (RQ) of people using different browsers. It found that Internet Explorer users performed worse than everyone else; they had lower RQ scores and were grossly overconfident.

Risk Intelligence is the ability to estimate probabilities accurately. Its test consisted of fifty statements which were either true or false and punters had to say how likely they thought each statement was. More than 351 took part and it seems that users of monopoly software that historically has been responsible for many of the most severe software vulnerabilities are not as good at estimating probabilities as their more adventurous counterparts.

Use of Microsoft Internet Explorer should be considered an indicator of poor risk intelligence, the report said. This would be consistent with studies showing that the computers of Internet Explorer users contain more malicious software than the machines of those using other browsers, that about 7% of downloads by Internet Explorer users are malicious and that the browser is amongst the most popular means of infecting Windows machines.

Sadly the creditably of the report has to be questioned when it claims that Apple users are the best when it comes to dealing with risk. As everyone in the IT world knows Apple users are incredibily naïve when it comes to risk assessments and actually believe everything that Apple tells them as 100 per cent true. Many believe their software is compeletely invulnerable to viruses and when it comes to proprietary, you cannot find a more proprietary company than Apple.