Trust Your AV?

On Sun, 03 Jan 2016 17:51:16 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Roger Blake wrote on 2016/01/03:

Live wrote:

Viruses are now officially to be considered dead – until further
notice.

The typical non-technical user has no knowledge of the distinctions
between different types of malware and refers to any unwanted crap that
manages to get into their PC as a "virus" - even if they themselves
installed it.

My experience with ransomware and zombieware (installed by others that I
have to cleanup) is that the user was lured into installing it. They
hit a site that tells them they are infected. The boobs believe it and
install the malware. The major security vulnerability of a general-
purpose OS is the user. Because computers are sold to everyone,
gullibles are included (and the same reason why spam continues).

Logically speaking, the blame for the spread of malware can be aimed,
fairly and squarely, at MSFT's door. :-) As a matter of fact, there's
even proof of this culpability in the default fileview options of "Hide
known file type extensions" (eg exe, com, scr, dll, and so on) that have
been present since at least windows95 (if not earlier) - a gift to the
trojan writers if ever anything from MSFT could be called such a gift.

The problem of malware exploded when the idiot consumers gained ready
access to internet services via their "designed for idiots" windows
encumbered PCs in the late 90s.

When you redesign your product so that *even* an idiot can use it then
compound it by dumbing it down so that *only* an idiot would *want* to
use it, you land up with billions of 'Marks' just waiting to be conned by
one internet scammer or another.

Up until the advent of win98 and winME and winXP, MFST's main target
market demographic had been the corporate and SME, user group (blessed
with at least some training) and home user enthusiasts with at least
*some* clue as to what a computer OS was all about (storage and
manipulation of data - the 'D' in DOS standing in for the data storage
part of the acronym). This focus shifted in the late 90s to the more
lucrative market demographic of "feckin' clueless consumers", lucrative
because they numbered in the billions rather than mere millions and,
better still, could have the wool pulled over their eyes with consummate
ease.

Never mind that gullibles are included in the 'marketing to everyone'
paradigm, gullibles pretty well defines MSFT's target market which they
have pursued so relentlessly as to completely **** off their former
market demographic simply because we're now such an insignificant
fraction of a percent of the total market that they simply don't give a
toss any more.

--
Johnny B Good