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Install that important patch



 
 
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  #11  
Old October 14th, 2003, 07:39 PM
Harlan Grove
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT

"Keith Willshaw" wrote...
...
In any event any company with a half way competent IT manager
has firewalls and virus protection in place. The problem
with viruses is more the millions of home users with neither.


Last time I looked, most OECD governments were trying to increase computer usage
and Internet access. Since they don't seem to be funding much for training, it
implies that most of these governments don't understand, appreciate or care
about the risks to all ISPs and Internet users arising from the actions of naive
users. Or maybe these governments believe that the benefits of ever broader
online access outweigh the costs to the Internet community and the displeasure
of the complaining class.

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  #12  
Old October 14th, 2003, 07:51 PM
Harlan Grove
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT

"Chrissy" wrote...
...
But nothing about MY almost TOTALLY MS system is vulnerable BECAUSE it
is MS. All it takes to protect one's self are a few basic rules which one
should follow regardless of OS used.


Such as knowing that *previewing* e-mail is unsafe if the e-mail previewer (such
as Outlook Express's) is capable of rendering HTML, which means it can run some
embedded scripts. Such as knowing that picture files don't have .SCR extensions
(but, PITA, they could have .MIM extensions - because Windows systems still use
filename extensions to determine file types, which itself is a nasty security
hole).

Sophisticated Windows users can safeguard their systems. Unsophisticated Windows
users usually don't because they haven't got a clue that's it's necessary to do
so much less how to do it. So, given this, is out-of-the-box functionality a
problem? Yes. Have most of the people who open e-mail attachments changed any of
their system settings? Very unlikely. So there's something about the system
default settings that most of these people are operating with that, er, don't
contribute to system security.

You mentioned novice users - no wonder we have a problem when we put a
powerful tool in the hands of someone who does not know how to use it.
In many countries it would be considered inappropriate (or even illegal) for a
company to give a powerful tool (which could cause millions of dollars
damage) to a totally untrained staff member but it is done all the time with
computers then we wonder why so much mayhem is caused.


There are legal remedies. Either sue the fools who open e-mail attachments
(that'd be politically popular!) or sue the companies most responsible for
providing the infrastructure that makes these viruses so easy to propagate.
Let's see if we can name one of the latter . . .

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  #13  
Old November 15th, 2003, 10:19 PM
David Garner
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Default Message to MICROSOFT - URGENT


"Chrissy" wrote in message
...
Harlan Grove wrote
"Chrissy" wrote...


But not everyone is knowledgeable about computers and the
people who are not all that knowledgeable but are trying to
learn often come here to get answers to their questions.
With the number of people I have heard of who are getting
the virus which is being posted to these groups many times
a day, and they all say that they have posted to MS groups,
I believe that there are posters here who have infected systems.


Not necessarily. It's far more likely that there are lurkers (people who

read
these ngs but seldom if ever post) who have infected systems.


That is simply not provable and almost certainly not true. If someone
is a lurker then they are most likely to be interested in MS stuff

specifically
or computers generally. They are then more likely to be some what

knowledgeable
about computers and thus less likely to have a virus.

Once a gain - the people with virus infections are likely to be the less
well informed - the guy who is new to computers and has not yet learnt
about viruses and how easy they are to get and how easy they are to
avoid.


It's a trade-off. If you want to use a medium in which Joe Bob's dumb

uncle can
spread the next virus to millions of other PCs because the medium offers
benefits that you perceive are greater than the risks, fine. If not,

don't use
it. As a third alternative, only use non-Windows boxes to browse the

internet -

I use ONLY MS Windows boxes to browse the internet and will continue to do

so.

none of the latest bugs affects anything other than Windows. If you were

using a
Linux box and using a maintenance service to keep current with security

updates,
you'd have been unaffected by Blaster, SoBig, Swen, etc. Ditto for

FreeBSD,
OS/2, Mac OS, Solaris, yada yada yada.


yada yada yada alright. All those systems WERE affected to the same

extent mine
was. I have NEVER had a virus infection and I doubt that I ever will. I

will continue
to get mail from people who do have viruses on their machines. The

current problem
I had did not affect my computer at all. It did however affect the mail

server which
hosts my domain - a Unix box. The affect was that it threw a spaz when I

got
250MBytes of mail an day. No security updates would help that. Their

system is
set up to have limits on disk usage and if I approach that limit they

e-mail me but
continue to let me use more. The limit I have for each users mail box is

20 MBytes
but I was using 69MBytes at one stage - I had turned off my computer to

add new
hardware so had not downloaded mail for about 15 mins. When I tried to

get mail
next their system kept saying that it could not allocate enough space for

a temp
folder so mail would not be deleted from the server. That meant that the

mail
was not marked as received and I ended up getting it about 10 times before

I saw
the problem. I can afford the bandwidth but that bandwidth costs them.

It was a Unix system that was affected - no, they were not infected with

the virus
but they were affected none the less.



Given the repeated waves of viruses, it's pretty obvious that new users

just
won't stop doing stupid things on the internet. Learn how to cope.


I have learnt how to cope. What I don't do it make stupid statements to

people
which implies that if they only used non MS OSs then they would not be

affected
by viruses. This misinformation is misleading at best and probably

dangerous if
said to novice users from someone they "think" knows what he is talking

about.

Chrissy.


A novice would probably pay for people to check there computer, if it was
doing silly things unless they could'nt see what was goinng on. But People
that create viruses are just show off's, so wont hide anything.


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.538 / Virus Database: 333 - Release Date: 10/11/2003


 




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