Currently problems ActiveX users should be aware of; Brought to you by; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActiveX The embedding of COM into the Internet Explorer web browser (under the name of ActiveX) created a combination of problems that has led to an explosion of computer virus, trojan and spyware infections. These malware attacks mostly depend on ActiveX for their activation and propagation to other computers. Microsoft recognized the problem with ActiveX as far back as 1996 when Charles Fitzgerald, program manager of Microsoft's Java team said "If you want security on the 'Net', unplug your computer. ... We never made the claim up front that ActiveX is intrinsically secure." [1] ActiveX as it is currently implemented is intrinsically insecure and is the biggest weakness of Internet Explorer not addressed by Windows XP Service Pack 2. As COM and ActiveX components are run as native code on the user's machine, there are no restrictions on what the code can and cannot do. Many of these problems have been addressed with the creation of the .NET platform, however.