Jumble Jumble
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Cagey said:
I'll ignore the slight implication that I'm not very good at my job there. And I'll take that as a "no, I can't show you any examples".
The thing is, it's fine for you to continue thinking that installing Windows is nearly the same thing as deliberately installing a virus. You barely run Windows at all so it's not a good use of your time to keep up to date with its security issues, or to understand the difference between the perceived and actual threat levels. Nothing bad can come of your increased caution - so it makes sense to stick with it.
But like I say, 20 years of working with Windows in environments where security is ridiculously critical means that I do need to know. I need to be able to understand the difference between scaremongering and actual potential damage. I need to know the things that can cause an infection and the things that can "in theory" but never have. Spending massive amounts of time and money protecting against things that the Linux community freak out about when you mention Windows only makes sense if the threat level is more significant than something else. Only when every risk that is more likely has been dealt with do we go on to the more obscure stuff. A much, much bigger problem is stuff like social engineering, people sharing passwords, that kind of thing. In all my working time, I've seen one problem come from a piece of malware (the ILoveYou virus in 2000 - and that was because a user had an admin-rights drive mapped to a live web server). I've seen far more problems that have come from users not being careful enough with their admin level accounts. When you're building systems you can't just not run as admin. Some of the stuff the malware does is stuff we need to do to get those systems in place. (To be honest, though, I've seen very few security problems - maybe 5 or 6 in that time)
So yes, like I say - for an average user with a web browsre and a few applications, Linux probably is a nice easy way to go to ensure security without having to worry too much about exploits (those that are found are fixed quickly from what I can tell). But to think that everyone using Windows is under the same level of threat to their computer's security, regardless of their expertise level, is at best naive and at worst a little condescending. Just because you're the most scared doesn't mean you're the most right.
ccasion14:
