Go get the add in called IE Tab. Work in a Law Firm and many courts around the country are so far behind it's insane. This works very well.
127.0.0.1 is the local loop back for testing basic IP communication using a virtual NIC. Ping is nothing more than a 'Hello are you there?" tool. In Windows it does not open a back door. I have asked everyone who as ever told me about this to prove it. No one has succeeded yet. Any basic Windows Firewall configuration will return a proxy not found with any other tool than ping. Hacking attempt through power shell, C Shell and C Sharp have all failed. The only time you could gain access to 127.0.0.1 was with Windows 95 A. It was patched in a week. Linux, which is at the core of MAC OS, on the other hand, it can be configured so that it can be accessible using the # Shell environment. Google it if you want more info.
MACs and iPhones are getting better with their security but there is a reason Apple is patching every couple of weeks. Their old policy was security through obscurity. No on would attack their systems as the market share was to low to make it worth while. Now that iPhones have the lions share of the telecom market and iPads are the predominant tablet you are seeing them attacked more. Back in ~2008 during the big Apple show of the year Apple wanted to prove they were secure offering several thousand $$$ to the first 'hacker' to get by their security. One guy did it in 2 minutes. He did the same thing for 4 years running using the same hack. The 5th year Apple banned him from the competition. iPhones are a necessity for me at work as the Lawyers love them. I like them but could use anything. MACs are a PIA in a large scale windows network environment. They require special setups to be truly secure including the use of NIC (MAC address) level security and reservations. Too much effort when Certificate Authentication for Hardware is simple with Windows. Heck it's even easier to use Hardware Certificates on printers today than to secure a MAC on a corporate network.