Web Numpties

On the subject of numb-brained persons, and their inability to deal with common knowledge, is it really a shock to know that a large number of people are still total twunts when it comes to computers? No, not really.

Fair enough, this entire story is about “honeypot” PCs and seeing how long it takes them to be attacked – but by definition these honeypots are unprotected – no firewall, no anti-virus, and (most importantly) a complete numpty at the keyboard.

The survey found 17% of people had no anti-virus software and 22% had no firewall. A further 23% said they had opened an e-mail attachment that came from an unknown source.

I’m sorry, but if people can’t be bothered to use an anti-virus tool, and to activate either Windows’ own software firewall, or get one of their own, then they bloody well deserve to be taken for a ride. As for opening up email from unknown sources, I kind of wrote about this over the weekend, but still, nearly a quarter of people have opened random emails with (one assumes) a subject line that makes them think it’s OK to open? I despair. Mind you, again, people who do that just deserve to be ripped off – it’s like an idiot tax.

At home our broadband connection comes through a box with a built-in firewall and router. There’s also at least a software firewall on all the machines in the house. And all of them use AVG’s anti-virus as a matter of course.

After all, it’s not like it’s difficult to get a decent free bit of anti-virus software like AVG. And OK, while my favourite software firewall has now disappeared (thanks to Symantec, who always were a bunch of scum-sucking weasels anyway) it’s still not difficult to find and install the likes of Zone Alarm, or even to use the entire anti-virus/firewall combinations released by companies like Norton, McAfee, et al.. It’s just that the “Oh, it’ll never happen to me” attitude still prevails, and it’s likely to continue to do so for the forseeable future, and for one prime reason. People are numpties. Simple as that.

Personally I think that all broadband connections – be it ADSL, Cable, ISDN, whatever – should use boxes with at least a basic built-in firewall. I know Windows XP SP2 activated the software firewall by default, and I think that’s a good thing too. I would like to see new PCs come with a decent (and free) anti-virus scanner – although of course Dell et al probably get a huge dollop of cash for pre-installing shit like McAfee on the computers they provide – so that everyone has access to the basic protection, from Day One, without having to shell out extra money.

If PC makers, Broadband providers and so on simply work on the assumption that people won’t bother, and just provide these simple things as a built-in, then a whole load of these problems would go away. Most standard PC users don’t bother uninstalling what comes with the PC, they want to just plug-and-go. So give them the security straight away. Don’t assume that either a) people will know they need this stuff or b) that they’ll go and download and install it as the first thing they do. They won’t. They’ll leave it ’til the PC is a heaving festering lump of viral content, pop-ups, and email shite, and then complain…

The computer’s gone wrong! I didn’t do anything! It’s the computer’s fault!