Penn State university recently told its 80,000 students to get rid of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and urged them to switch to alternative browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Mozilla, or Opera. In an alert issued to students and staff, the university’s Information Technology Services (ITS) recommended the switch “because the threats are real and alternatives exist to mitigate Web browser vulnerabilities.” ITS said “The university computing community [should] use standards-based Web browsers other than Internet Explorer to help minimize exposure to attacks that occur through browser vulnerabilities.” In related news, Firefox has been downloaded more than 10 million times since it was officially released a little more than a month ago.