The French and German governments have both issued statements recently advising their citizens to stop using Internet Explorer 6. It advises users to move to another browser, such as Mozilla's Firefox or Google's Chrome, or upgrade Internet Explorer to versions 7 or 8. The UK government is under pressure to issue the same warning but has yet to do so. However, the Department of Health Informatics Directorate has issued a statement saying all NHS computers should be upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 as soon as possible, and various other departments seem to be following their lead.

These warnings all stem from the recently much publisised cyber-attacks on Google in China. The hackers gained entry via computers running Internet Explorer 6 at Google. Google use Internet Explorer 6 in their QA department to ensure that all of its sites are usable by the 20% of internet users who still use it today. Ensuring web pages work on the most popular browsers is a common problem when building sites. The best way to test that a page displays correctly in Internet Explorer 6 is to test using that browser.

Google will now be phasing out support of Internet Explorer 6 in many of its services including Gmail and Google Apps, and may even stop supporting it on its standard Google Search pages.

To check what version of Internet Explorer you are using, click on Help -> About.