Internet Explorer 7 installation leads to security breach

As known since some weeks, even the pure installation of Internet Explorer 7 may lead to a major security breach of the Windows operating system. Links (URLs) in non-Microsoft applications (e.g. Adobe Reader, Mozilla Firefox, Skype, Miranda,...) may be modified in a way that clicking on them starts arbitrary Windows applications. This could be used to install and start spyware, viruses, trojan horses and so on.

Although some applications, including Mozilla Firefox, did some patches to make this attack harder, we strongly recommend our users (if Windows Vista is used) to uninstall Internet Explorer 7. Unfortunately, it is currently explicitly (!) ignored by Microsoft - honi soit qui mal y pense.

Update:
For protecting your operating system from damage, you should respect the warning notices in Control Panel/Software when uninstalling. All programs listet in the notices must be uninstalled before deinstalling and have to be reinstalled afterwards if needed.