Dumb users spread viruses

Mon Feb 9 16:07:35 UTC 2004

In article <4027A8DE.5030306 at he.iki.fi>, Petri Helenius <pete at he.iki.fi> 
writes
> You get millions of people calling asking how to disable the annoying 
>feature that they got when they updated the computer. In addition they 
>will tell other people not to upgrade because it gets more annoying to 
>use email and the earlier way was more convinient.

That's a user interface design issue. People seem happy enough with 
popups from virus checkers saying "suchandsuch a file is infected - what 
do you want to do about it", all I'm proposing is something similar for 
"potentially harmful files".

You already get something similar for (eg) driver files not signed as 
XP-compatible. Does that put people [support desks, users, potential 
upgraders] off XP?

I agree there may be a scaling issue, although I see fewer 
wanted-executables annually than I have non-XP drivers installed, which 
is also pretty much an annual exercise.

Of course, if it did gain acceptance maybe the black hats would simply 
deliver their infections differently.
-- 
Roland Perry