What's the danger in running an older version of Firefox?

as the title says... if my OS has all the latest update and I have an Antivirus, is there any risk in running older versions of Firefox?

 

Older versions of Firefox may have security flaws that have not been fixed, but are known to the public at large, and thus could potentially be easily exploited. Thus, there's a chance that with an older version of Firefox, you could visit a site that was designed to take advantage of one of those security flaws. The consequences could range from something like cross-site scripting (XSS), where a page can read or change the contents of another page open in your browser, to the site being able to run arbitrary software on your computer, depending on the type of flaw.

Some of the malware will also need a not-up-to-date operating system to do its worst, but some might not. And anti-virus will catch some of it, but not all of it. Like other aspects of the security puzzle, you can't 100% make up for having an out-of-date browser. Being up to date otherwise reduces the risks, and may reduce them enough to make it worth using an out of date browser in some cases, but you'd still have a higher risk than if you had an up-to-date Firefox (provided the Firefox updates between your version and the latest include at least one security patch, which is usually the case).

If you want to be up-to-date but don't like Firefox 32, you should look into the ESR (Extended Support Releases) of Firefox. Currently, Firefox 31 ESR is receiving updates for another year or so, and Firefox 24 ESR is also up-to-date, although I think the most recent Firefox 24 update is the last one, so it won't be up-to-date very much longer.

TL;dr: Yes, there is some risk.

 

well FF ESR 31 looks just as fugly as the normal FF that's why I asked

Pale Moon is a pile of bugs so I don't wanna use it anymore

 

We have to live with the UI change... I am using FF32 and well whether I like it or not I'll have to live with the changes.

 

What bugs are you referring to? I haven't noticed any - which doesn't mean that they don't exist - and would like to learn more...

 

According to this user, in another forum, Pale Moon is the bomb! :rolleyes2:

Pale Moon - MaxGeeks Forum

What do you think, Maxine?

 

Just look at a few threads on their forum and you'll know what I mean:

Pale Moon forum • View forum - Community support

It was indeed, until the recent update to 24.7.1 that broke the entire browser, add-ons such as LastPass are no more 100% compatible, heck even the LAstPass icon would appear as triple the size unless you manually change it to something else other than the default. Then comes the occasional hangs on Flash Videos

And sine Pale Moon decided to stick to the FF 24 ESR engine, the speed increase over Firefox has long been gone, and now FF smokes it in terms of speed and they will never catch up if they keep using such an old Gecko Engine

 

Who is Maxine?!

 

FYI that is most likely FF 33.0 Beta....so let's be clear on that...that's not the release but Beta release...when posting one should note that for all others reading so their isn't misinterpretation of the release or beta versions.