That having been said, and after running only Windows machines for about twenty years,

Mac, MacIntosh, Mac, Mac and Mac. Also, Apple Macs, Mac-ish, Mac, Mac, Mac.

I am an awfully zealous convert. It’s just a different gig. Can you be infected? Sure. But you have to hang yourself. And you have to pretty much run down the plank and hurl yourself off.

but i’ve run windows machines for decades and i’ve found that a box running behind a spi firewall in the router, keeping up with patches, using up to date software and a good free antivirus keeps things nice and clean. i also recommend running the noscript plugin for your browser (chrome and firefox i know can use it). the web just not as fun with java turned off on all sites and turning it on and off manualy just is a pain.

after you get your computer setup the way you like run a disk image of your os drive and if anything nasty does happen, its a 30 minute fix.

It’s a dense read, and an interesting formalized approach. While I’ve had to ecucate users frequently, I’ve not given a lot of thought into how their models messed with their cost/benefit analyses, aside from informing them that “doing it that way doesn’t actually work.”

So far (~halfway) the most interesting point has been that as users acquire additional information, their security decisions overall improve noticeably, but they also suffer more cognitive dissonance.

I don’t have a clue about the regular usage habits of home PC users, but I imagine it really isn’t much more than browsing, pictures, music and possibly video. Give yourself a full OS and you’re exposing a lot more than you are with a semi-locked-down, function-oriented system.

I try to understand that everybody should be able to use the Internet, but have trouble suppressing my exasperation at the cluelessness of many users, whether it’s gullibility relating to a scam or not reading (or rather not interpreting) error messages. I may learn to drive one day. There’s no way in hell I’m going to do that unless I know how the engine works, and how it integrates into the whole. I don’t understand how you could comfortably type your credit card number into a machine without applying the same mindset.

This is an unpleasant and inconvenient reality that most security experts will deny, deny, deny — because of course they wish to sell the goods and services that claim to accomplish this, and flatly admitting that it can’t be done would undercut their rationale. But there are (at latest, best estimate) about 200 million systems out there constituting a substantial supporting argument for this position.

And by the time you’ve finished reading this, there will be more — since the number of such systems has been monotonically increasing for a decade, and since there is no reason whatsoever to suspect that the trend might be reversing.

This is NOT, by the way, to say that non-Windows systems are secure. Of course they’re not: they have their own issues. But it is to say that anyone who claims to be able to secure a Windows system is either stupid, incompetent, delusional, lying or paid by Microsoft.

Viruses are Buggy Software
One group of respondents saw computer viruses as an exceptionally bug-ridden form of regular computer software. In many ways, these respondents believe that viruses behave much like most of the other software that home users experience. But to be a virus, it has to be `bad’ in some additional way. Primarily, viruses are `bad’ in that they are poorly written software. They lead to a multitude of bugs and other errors in the computer. They bring out bugs in other pieces of software. They tend to have more bugs, and worse bugs, than most other pieces of software. But all of the effects they cause are the same types of effects you get from buggy software: viruses can cause computers to crash, or to “boot me out” (Erica) of applications that are running; viruses can accidentally delete or “wipe out” in- formation (Christine and Erica); they can erase important system files. In general, the computer just “doesn’t function properly” (Erica) when it has a virus.

And:

Hackers are Criminals who Target Big Fish
Another group of respondents had a conceptually similar model. This group also believes that hackers are Internet criminals who are looking for information to conduct identity theft. However, this group has thought more about how these hackers can best accomplish this goal, and have come to some different conclusions. These respondents believe in “massive hacker groups” (Hayley) and other forms of organization and coordination among criminal hackers. Most tellingly, this group believes that hackers only target the “big fish.” Hackers primarily break into computers of important and rich people in order to maximize their gains. Every respondent who holds this model believes that he or she is not likely to be a victim because he or she is not a big enough fish. They believe that hackers are unlikely to ever target them, and therefore they were safe from hacking. Irving believe that “I’m small potatoes and no one is going to bother me.” They often talk about how other people are more likely targets: “Maybe if I had a lot of money” (Floyd) or “like if I were a bank executive” (Erica). For these respondents, protecting against hackers isn’t a high priority

My reasoning follows along the lines of the first two comments: it seems like a sisyphean task that I’ll ultimately fail at, and the people who would claim to eliminate risks for me have a vested interest in the maintenance of those very risks. Also, as I’ve already stated, Jim does fixes up my sick computer for a very reasonable price and I like giving him business.

There’s really a good comparison between cars and computers #8, I don’t know anything about my car either. As far as I’m concerned they’re both magical contraptions that work because a bunch of skilled magicians said the right words over them at midnight while burning savory herbs. I like it that way.

I think the conclusion that should be reached from this is that people are going to learn about computers much in the same way that many of them learn about cars: piecemeal and as it applies to them. I know more about alternators than almost any other part of a car, because I’ve had alternator problems.

Perhaps Windows ought to recommend that computers are brought in regularly to be looked over by magicians who know what to look for, it could be cheap, fast and easy, like an oil change.

I don’t want to spend much of my time being educated about things that I have no interest in. I already feel as if I don’t spend enough time doing things I enjoy and worrying about possibilities I don’t know how to prevent.