Pretty soon, you’ll stop receiving updates for your Firefox browser if you’re running Windows XP or Vista. Mozilla recently announced that it will be dropping support for the two platforms by next year.
In a company blog post, Mozilla announced that it plans to drop support for its Firefox browser for users running on the two operating systems after June 2018. “As one of the few browsers that continues to support Windows XP and Vista, Firefox users on these platforms can expect security updates until that date,” the company explained, adding that “users do not need to take additional action to receive those updates.”
Over 15 years after its initial launch, Mozilla Firefox has officially ended support for Windows XP and Vista.https://t.co/0mXRjRcxAw
— Deltec Solutions (@Deltec) October 5, 2017
Microsoft retired support for XP in April 2014 while Vista was retired in April 2017. This means that Microsoft no longer gives security updates for the two outdated operating systems but third-party developers like Firefox can still continue to support their products running on the two platforms.
Last year, Mozilla announced that they have moved users still running on Windows XP and Vista to Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR). This means that Firefox users running on the outdated Microsoft operating systems still be safe until June 26, 2018, since ESR version 52 will still receive a scheduled updated on May 1, 2018, according to ComputerWorld. The next security update after that is already scheduled on June 26, 2018, which will no longer include support for XP and Vista users.
Thus, Mozilla is urging the affected users to upgrade to newer versions of Windows supported by Microsoft. Running on the unsupported operating systems is unsafe especially since they already have known vulnerabilities that may be exploited.
Windows XP regains some market share, Windows 7 drops, according to NetMarketShare | On MSFT https://t.co/W9lQzMo7hl pic.twitter.com/WALfEE9SuQ
— CDX Technologies (@cdxtech) July 24, 2017
Mozilla has not released the figures on how many Firefox users are still using the outdated Microsoft systems. However, Net Applications said that the combined Vista and XP users only form 6.12 percent of the total market share, a figure deemed low enough to justify discontinuing Mozilla’s support.
[Featured Image via Mozilla]