We have grown accustomed to Microsoft releasing patches on Patch Tuesday every month and occasionally a patch elsewhere when they deem a vulnerability critical enough to warrant it.

Well, Microsoft deemed it critical enough and is releasing a patch for IE at noon on Wednesday December 17th to fix an issue with all versions of IE.

Now, there are a LOT of blogs, newspapers, magazine sites, etc making a HUGE issue of this.

Let me tell you.  Just as before, NONE of this hype is worth scaring you to death or making Microsoft look bad.

First if you have your anti-virus updates and Windows updates set to automatic, you don’t have ANYTHING to worry about.

If you have Windows updates not doing so automatically, then all you have to do anytime after noon on Wednesday is click on Start, then All Programs, and then Windows Update on the menu.  You only need to do the Express updates.  Done.

The procedure is the same for XP and Vista.

If your anti-virus is not updating automatically, then look for the update feature in your particular brand of software and update it.  I would also change the settings to update daily on it’s own.  That is the safest protection.

If your anti-virus is out of date and requires renewal, consider removing it and installing Avast Anti-Virus.  You can find it on the Downloads page in the menu above.