AfterDawn: Tech news

Online retailer to penalize users who use Internet Explorer 7

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 14 Jun 2012 7:16 User comments (12)

Online retailer to penalize users who use Internet Explorer 7

The online electronics retailer Kogan has announced on its site today that it will be charging any customer using the site through Internet Explorer 7 with a 6.8 percent tax on their purchase.
Why 6.8 percent? "That's 0.1 per cent for each month IE7 has been on the market," reads the post.

Founder Ruslan Kogan says the tax is because he is forced to spend too much energy (and money) on making the site usable for IE7 users:

"Internet Explorer 7 has long since passed its use-by date. It's a constant source of frustration for our web guys and we're sick of burning cash on a browser that hit the market nearly six years ago. It goes against everything Kogan stands for."

In order to remove the penalty, users can switch to any other modern browser, including IE 8 or later, Chrome, Opera, Firefox or Safari.

Read Kogan's post here: New IE7 tax

Previous Next  

12 user comments

114.6.2012 19:42

Ms will not stand for this

215.6.2012 01:50

Hah! It makes me want to buy something from them.

I bet Google gave 'em a million bucks to do this.

315.6.2012 04:56

Alot of things no longer work with old browsers. I don't know why anyone would still be using them. Unless they have an un-activated windowsXP installation which would not allow users to update IE

415.6.2012 08:46

Maybe if MS didn't wildly change things between releases and stuck with standards YEARS ago. We can't even use IE 9 at work because it doesn't handle some of our web-based tools well (and yes, it's MS not adhering to standards, not the tools, so there's no big push to update all the tools to make sure they're compliant to MS's whims). Not surprising, since MS mostly ignores bug reports of Office, Windows and other products too!

515.6.2012 15:15

Might be M$ using businesses as passive aggressive soldiers for their upgrade 'cause' to upgrade. Possibly even to 7 or the inevitable imploding Windows 8. Who's to completely know, but this is the first creative means by which to coerce 'customers' into complying with someones wishes.

615.6.2012 17:46

i would just add the tax just for even USING internet explorer lol.

IE is for users who are not very computer savey. its your "Basic" browser. just like the crappy ones that come with your cell phone.

I dont use it, i WONT use it, its unsecure to boot. if you see what browser can and cant be hacked, or takes the longest, it sure IS NOT internet explorer. so far i think its always been hacked every year, in under 1 minute. lol.

716.6.2012 02:46

Originally posted by LordRuss:
Might be M$ using businesses as passive aggressive soldiers for their upgrade 'cause' to upgrade. Possibly even to 7 or the inevitable imploding Windows 8. Who's to completely know, but this is the first creative means by which to coerce 'customers' into complying with someones wishes.
Not to mention how they managed to monetize their clients reluctance and/or ignorance in keeping their web browser up-to-date.

816.6.2012 20:08

I completely agree with this person 'Ruslan Kogan'. Anyone using a very old browser like internet explorer 7 need a brain check-up as it's too old and obsolete. If these people like explorer why don't they download explorer 9 as it has way better security and also looks better. I'm not going to get into a browser war but the latest firefox 13 is excellent so use that if you don't want to upgrade explorer or maybe it's just downright lazyness that people won't upgrade.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 16 Jun 2012 @ 8:10

916.6.2012 21:38

In some countries this would be against the law.

I honestly fail to see how IE7 could be causing problems unless you are trying to do stuff that wasn't fully ratified by the standard bodies they take quite a long time to get stuff sorted.

They still haven't done WWW5 100% yet and that's taken a good 5+ years so far, a big problem has been the video side you have google wanting something that will still work with flash and apple want something that'll only work with itunes/quicktime.

MS want their own video codecs as the video standard.

WWW5 body has been talking about doing their own thing.

I think WWW3 would have been going through the exact same thing but it was about what and how to get java/javascript/activex/xml/style sheets/asp/php etc to work properly with each other and to get them to show up properly on all browsers and OSes at the time.

just looked at their site and they have that someone bought blah adware crap in corner and stuff all that crap will break browsers and stuff, also makes me not want to bother with the site seeing that crap come up also.

Ebay pages are done in a simple way for a reason it's simple and it works on everything, maybe kogan should forget about the gimmick crap and just do a proper web shop site.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 16 Jun 2012 @ 9:44

1029.6.2012 07:14

Using ie7 is a bit like owning a nice house but living in the garden shed, admittedly the shed will stop u getting wet when it rains but the house is just better.
But to second what another poster said, ie sux, it's slow, unreliable, vulnerable and worse of all it comes from the giant money magnet that is, micro$haft.
Firefox all the way for me!

113.7.2012 13:57

The latest bug discovered in Firefox is more serious than most. The latest version of the Mozilla browser, Firefox 13, comes with a tabbed browsing feature that shows a list of recent websites when you open a new tab.

No problem with this you might think - Chrome and Internet Explorer do the same. But the problem with the implementation on Firefox is that the website thumbnails show pictures of secure websites.

And this means that they can display online banking and webmail sessions for example, complete with account numbers, balances, subject lines and so on. This can happen even if you are logged out of the sites in question, meaning that a snooper can take a look at important sensitive data just by opening a new browser tab.

Firefox is designed to automatically update itself, so if you're a Firefox user you most probably already have the bug ridden version installed on your system.

Mozilla have admitted that this is a problem and that they shouldn't be creating copies of this information from secure sites and storing them on your PC. Such sites are secure for a reason after all.

So, if you're a Firefox user you should expect a patch from Mozilla which fixes the problem.

But until that happens, you can turn the thumbnail view off to stop the problem from happening. Here's how:
1. In the Firefox, press [Ctrl] + [T] to open a new tab.
2. In the address bar, type about:config and press [Enter].
3. Double-click on the option browser.newtabpage.enabled to set the Value field to false.
4. Close the tab.

123.7.2012 15:44

can also turn off the auto-update if you want, did that with mine.

Comments have been disabled for this article.

Latest news

VLC hits milestone: over 5 billion downloads VLC hits milestone: over 5 billion downloads (16 Mar 2024 4:31)
VLC Media Player, the versatile video-software powerhouse, has achieved a remarkable feat: it has been downloaded over 5 billion times.
2 user comments
Sideloading apps to Android gets easier, as Google settles its lawsuit Sideloading apps to Android gets easier, as Google settles its lawsuit (19 Dec 2023 11:09)
Google settled its lawsuit in September 2023, and one of the settlement terms was that the way applications are installed on Android from outside the Google Play Store must become simpler. In the future, installing APK files will be easier.
8 user comments
Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets Roomba Combo j7+ review - Clever trick allows robot vacuum finally to tackle home with rugs and carpets (06 Jun 2023 9:19)
Roomba Combo j7+ is the very first Roomba model to combine robot vacuum with mopping features. And Roomba Combo j7+ does all that with a very clever trick, which tackles the problem with mopping and carpets. But is it any good? We found out.
Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations Neato, the robot vacuum company, ends its operations (02 May 2023 3:38)
Neato Robotics has ceased its operations. American robot vacuum pioneer founded in 2005 has finally called it quits and company will cease its operations and sales. Only a skeleton crew will remain who will keep the servers running until 2028.
5 user comments
How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp How to Send Messages to Yourself on WhatsApp (20 Mar 2023 1:25)
The world's most popular messaging platform, Meta-owned WhatsApp has enabled sending messages to yourself. While at first, this might seem like an odd feature, it can be very useful in a lot of situations. ....
18 user comments

News archive