Dealers should move quickly to update their web browsers or risk leaving the ‘door open for malicious attacks’, warns iVendi.

This week, Microsoft is withdrawing support for versions 8, 9 and 10 of the widely used Internet Explorer, and will stop issuing security updates.

James Tew, CEO at e-commerce specialist iVendi, said that using these older browsers was “bad practice” and put businesses at risk.

Tew said: “The most important is security. When updates are no longer made available, as with these older versions of IE, it leaves the door open for malicious attack that could affect both dealers and their customers.

“However, at a time when online technology is changing quite rapidly, it also inhibits the user experience, especially when it comes to smartphones and tablets.”

Tew said that iVendi would continue to support dealers for use of IE 9 and 10 for the next few months but had already withdrawn support for version 8.

He added: “Our new generation iVendi Platform, being launched this month, will work in IE 9,10 and 11 but moving forward new features won’t be supported.

“As a result we are helping some dealers update and it is a relatively pain-free process unless you are using really old PCs or you have some kind of unusual legacy system issue.

“We do sometimes encounter dealers who really want to stay with an old version of a browser and it is a mystery to us why they don’t want to update. In many cases, it is actually more difficult and time-consuming to keep systems running using old browsers than to simply adopt the latest version.”