Rob Pegoraro

Special for USA TODAY

Q. Microsoft tells me it’s no longer supporting the version of Internet Explorer I’ve been running. Do I just need to update to IE 11?

A. Microsoft ended support for all older versions of its Internet Explorer Web browser on Tuesday--meaning no more security fixes, no more help--and the first move for people running IE 8, 9 or 10 must be installing Microsoft’s IE 11.

Doing nothing is not an option. Older versions of IE are insecure compared to IE 11, sometimes grossly so. And you don’t even need to go to a dodgy site to get hacked; “malvertising,” ads embedding hostile code that are then snuck onto ad networks, can lurk in familiar pages and, at worst, leave your computer imprisoned by ransomware.

(Last week, Forbes readers found themselves attacked by malvertising--only weeks after that site began refusing entry to people running ad-blocking plug-ins until they turned them off.)

Internet Explorer 11 is not just more secure than its predecessors but also does a better job of supporting Web standards, although in Windows 10 the new Edge browser that replaced it is better still, not to mention a good deal faster.

IE 11’s Windows 7 version, however, has some issues of its own. For starters, it differs from other flavors of IE 11 by not including a locked-down version of Adobe’s Flash player that gets updated automatically by Microsoft’s own Windows Update software.

Instead, you’re left with Adobe’s regular plug-in. Relying on that increases your odds of falling victim to one of Flash’s apparently never-ending series of vulnerabilities.

In Windows 7, IE 11 can also run a lot slower than other browsers. ZDNet’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols found that version of IE ran slower than the current releases of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera in three of four benchmark tests on an older Gateway PC.

So here are the other parts of my advice to people running older versions of IE: After you upgrade to IE 11, you should uninstall Flash and then install Chrome.

Dumping Adobe’s plug-in--yes, you’ve read that advice here before--ends a giant security headache. Installing Chrome not only gives you a fast, secure browser but also provides a safer way to deal with the occasional site that insists on using Flash.

That’s because Chrome’s Flash plug-in not only runs inside a locked-down “sandbox” and gets updated along with the rest of Google’s browser; Chrome now only runs “important” Flash content and pauses the rest of it. In other words, the Flash video clip you want to watch will play, while the ads around it should not.

On that note: If you haven’t uninstalled Oracle’s Java software already, you should now. It has no place on the Web, and the few desktop apps that require it now install their own versions of Java with no connection to your browser.

What if you’re running a version of Windows older than Win 7? You have my condolences, but you don’t have my permission to stand pat with an old version of IE.

You can’t, however, upgrade to Chrome anymore, because Google ended that browser’s XP and Vista support in November. Instead, look to two browsers that still support those long-gone operating systems: Mozilla Firefox and Opera.

Rob Pegoraro is a tech writer based out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, e-mail Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/robpegoraro.