Internet Explorer 8 is the safest web browser on the market, according to a pair of studies sponsored by, um, Microsoft.One study focused on socially engineered malware and the other on phishing.In the first study, NSS Labs found that IE8 caught 81 percent of live threats, while Firefox 3 caught 27 percent, Safari 4 caught 21 percent, Chrome 2 caught 7 percent and Opera 10 Beta caught 1 percent. NSS attributed this to “concerted efforts Microsoft is making in the SmartScreen technology.” But one might wonder