Microsoft to officially kill off Internet Explorer in June 2022

An official end date of June 2022 has been announced for Internet Explorer, one of the Internet’s most well-known browsers.

The last remaining supported version of the browser – Internet Explorer 11 – will be officially killed off in June 2022, according to Microsoft.

It’s been a long, painful death for Internet Explorer. Originally released with Windows 95, it was initially the most prolifically used browser, sitting at the top of the pack by some distance. Its iconic blue E symbol practically synonymous with cyberspace. But a fall from grace was soon coming with the growing popularity (and market share) of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

Eventually even Internet Explorer’s own developer – Microsoft – came up with a new browser, Microsoft Edge. Consequently the end was nigh for IE.

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Even back in 2015 Microsoft were pushing people to use Microsoft Edge as they tried to slowly put the brakes on Internet Explorer. And in 2020 Microsoft announced that 2021 would see support for Internet Explorer drop considerably. In August 2021, Microsoft’s 365 suite of apps, OneDrive and Outlook will no longer support the browser. (The Microsoft Teams desktop app dropped support for it in November 2020.)

And on June 15th 2022, at some point during that assumedly unremarkable Wednesday, 25 years of Internet Explorer will officially come to an end in the consumer market, as all mainstream support is officially killed off.

All consumers will then be encouraged to use supported browsers. That’s because with no mainstream support, there will be no security fixes. Security fixes are particularly important for browsers, since they’re effectively the gateway between the user and the dangers lurking in the World Wide Web.

Using unsupported browsers increases the risk of being targeted with exploits, and in turn that increases the risk of being scammed or having information stolen from you. Even getting infected with malware.

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Microsoft Edge Chromium does have an IE Legacy Mode that can be enabled for those that use older software that requires the trappings of Internet Explorer to function correctly. Microsoft has promised to keep this IE Mode active until at least 2029.

In the meantime, we recommend downloading an alternative browser if you’re still using Internet Explorer. It’s quick, easy and free.