Friday Is Update Your Parents’ Browser Day

I started seeing this notion on Twitter a couple of days ago, and now Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic is hoping to make it official by declaring Friday Update Your Parents’ Browser Day. I would take it one step further and declare the days between November 25th and December 25th as Update Your Parents’ Browser Month.

‘Tis the season to go visiting family you may not get to see all of the time, so what better opportunity to make the cyberworld a better place?

End the tyranny of Internet Explorer 6 and all other less-secure versions of modern browsers where they’re most likely to hide: in the unsuspecting computers of the less-savvy.

Madrigal has some tips on how to do this sneakily, especially if you’ve argued your point with parents before and they continue not to listen. My favorite is to blame the upgrade on “The Cloud.”

One thing I disagree with: that you shouldn’t change up the browser on your parents. I’m sorry, but if they’re using Internet Explorer then you really, really should. Give them Chrome, give them Firefox, give them anything else. But no matter what, update that browser to the latest stable version.

And, while you’re at it, make sure their virus definitions are up to date as well.

If all tech-savvy Americans would just take a moment to provide this public service the Internet would be a much less dangerous place. Won’t you think of the children?