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Spam and Spyware Too Much for Some Users
stewart_maximus writes "Spam and spyware is annoying to everyone, but some users are giving up on the Internet (mirror). Any Slashdot readers know someone who pulled the plug in frustration? Any advice for frustrated users, especially non-technical users?"
Oh, there's lots of great things to see and do on the 'net, but there's so much predation by more scum than even Mos Eisley would see on a good day that newbies must be inoculated before exposing themselves to it.
A firewall, virus scanning and quite a lot of gorm, to avoid spam scams. I'm almost to the point of telling, not merely suggesting, people to skip it if there isn't some damn good reason to be on the 'net.
Oh, and don't use Microsoft Explorer or Outlook or <Marvin Martian Voice> you'll be sorry, very sorry indeed.</Marvin Martian Voice> Getting on the 'net with good tools is a must and keeping up on them is also a must. Some degree of technical understanding is also essential, to identify when something is out of the ordinary, i.e. that request to verify your bank account goes to some ip address instead of yourback.com and where to go to keep up on the latest tools and information to protect oneself.
In the end, visiting or maintaining a presence on the internet is a job, not just an adventure, which requires some effort by the user to protect themselves.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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Call me a troll, whatever.
I use to fix friends/relatives PCs all the time with their problems.
Then spyware just went amuck.
I tell people now to just buy an apple. They most likely won't call me for help with PC issues.
I myself am sick of the spyware crap that's out there infecting PCs. I am on the road to going 100% mac.
I don't see Microsoft fixing these issues, so I just tell people buy an Apple.
If a user doesn't have the time and/or inclination to leave their browser of (informed) choice downloading critical updates to browser, OS, AV, anti-spyware and so on, then they're more likely to go "Ah, skip it - I can get them later, and anything dodgy will get cleared out then."
If you don't have the bandwidth to match your impatience, you're less likely to keep your critical software up-to-date. Simple psychology.
Meta will eat itself
This is a bad thing?
I can feel the Internet's collective IQ rising...
I see your point in that, having first used the Internet/Usenet in 1990, I sometimes miss the level of discussion then. On the other hand, it *was* pretty narrow -- with just geeks and professors online, science, math, and science-fiction were the dominant subjects. I mean, did anyone use the Internet to talk about weird stuff like the influence of Mexican music on Yugoslavian culture back then?
Yes, my parents were forced off the internet. Well, one of them was forced off the net.
Its sort of funny. Because my dad, in his late 80s, will not use anything except a mac. He upgraded to panther and an IMac. He has been using Macs since his first Mac SE. No problems. He had one virus in the 80s I think. mdef resource virus or something on floppy disks.
My mother, in her 70s, insists on using windows. She had windows 2000. It stopped working because it was infested with spyware and viruses. She was knocked off for a month. So, I upgraded to windows XP. A month after the upgrade, the pc was infested with spyware and viruses again. Had to run spy bot and do the updates. But then she got norton out of frustration. Norton adds some software to the filesystem and it slowed the pc to an inoperable state. At that point she was knocked not only off the internet but off the pc. Had to clean that mess up. Told her to get rid of norton and run spybot more often. The pc is a pentium 500. I cant even imagine upgrading it to another box because they probably dont know where all their files are and neither do I! Huff, all sorts of spyware controls installed into the IE browser. Total mess. It gets frustrating doing all this free admin work.
The whole "turn a spankin' brand new PC" onto the Internet and it's infected with tons of crap in a few weeks/months IS a real industry problem. There was a great /. article on spyware yesterday - more pressure needs to be brought to bear to the people feeding this industry. And while it's one thing to have banner ads that just "sit there", it seems that the mainstream folks could get by with less popups and cookie setting IMHO - the later especially can be used for nefarious tracking purposes.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
The ages of people interviewed seem to be 50, 52 and 77. Can anybody younger afford to remain offline? Even if you don't (already) need net in your job, not having an email seems actually quite impolite nowadays.
Also, using my .mac account for my primary email, I get about five spams a day. And each and every one of them originate from the same company, that a 'friend' of mine signed me up so she could get some free movie tickets. (She is actually an ex-friend over this very issue... she went ballistic when I asked her not to give out my personal information or send me stupid forwarded joke emails. Her response back screamed I WILL NEVER SEND YOU ANOTHER EMAIL, EVER! and I said, "fine by me.") I could try to get rid of those five per day emails, but I'm afraid of increasing the amount by using their 'unsubscribe' link.
My dad is in his mid 60s and has been using a computer for about 10 years now. I stopped by my parent's house last year and he told me he was cancelling his dial up service because he had so much crap on his computer. I took his computer, wiped it clean and put a new copy of windows 2k on it along with firefox and thunderbird. I told him not to use IE or outlook, only use the two programs I had put on his computer for him. He's still using the internet now, several months later and is very happy with the Mozilla programs. I put Zonealarm on his computer too and he loves getting the little pop up messages telling him it's blocked something. He has told several of his friends that they need to switch over to firefox also.
you should understand that just because the Mac has least market peneteration, people and companies just don't care to make Spyware for it. Nobody wants to work on something that'll give them the computer usage statistics of just a few percent of user among the billions of those out there.
I fix home computers as a side gig and I tell people, especially those people who own cheap or old computers and don't do much more than surf, email, and word process that user friendly versions of Linux are waiting for them, immune to nearly all viruses and spyware and the best part is they will probably not have to restart their computer anymore.
Did I mention they are free and I will make you the CD's for Fedora, Mandrake, Suse, or whatever other distro you want and you can just pay me to install them for you.
Alas, maybe they are afraid they will miss me.
Firefox would help, but is not completely foolproof. There are still exploits for Firefox, and this would not help with downloadable stuff.
Perhaps the best solution for those people who just don't (or can't) learn to protect themselves is to hand them Knoppix.
Pull the plug on the network while in Windows. If you want to surf then insert Knoppix, reboot, and plug the cable back in. Safe, secure browsing. And if you DO get compromised, security is one reboot away. This still does not stop Spam, though. And with Knoppix, web-based e-mail is probably the easiest.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Games.
.. and they also have a bunch of flash games that run on the Internet. Going either route (Mac/Linux or No Internet) means sacrificing one of the two.
My wife wants to get a second computer for the living area (as I use our current computer mostly all the time for business etc.) and I'm trying to convince her to either get a Mac, Linux or if she *must* have Windows to keep it off the Internet.
She won't budge mainly because of games. Our kids have a bunch of little kid games that only run on Windows
So it's not just as cut and dry as switching to Mac and forget your problems. There's always going to be some kind of sacrifice.
...because it's making you see extra zeroes. Depending on how severe the problem is, $300 is not really that far out.
/. for relationship status, personal hygene, etc. It's fun to watch "the comic book guy" on the Simpsons, but it's not fun to actually deal with such people. In fact, "the world is better off" if these jerks could learn some social skills.
Anyways, Our AC friend typifies the sort of arrogant, antisocial IT people who are mocked on
I remember a skit on SNL that hit the nail on the head--it featured "the IT guy" (played by Chris Kattan I think) that everyone in the office despised but relied on to fix their computers. He'd invariably spout a bit of technical jargon, followed by some kind of insult--along the lines of "Oh that's easy, just clear the printer queue and reinitialise, but I guess you're too STUPID to figure that out...I'm amazed you figured out how to BREATHE..."
Look, if someone carts in a home PC and has gigabytes of pictures, music and other files they want to keep, and it is so clogged with viruses and spyware that it is better just to re-install, then backing up all that stuff, re-installing the OS and configuring the system can take anywhere from a couple hours to a whole workday. If it was toward the latter end then $300 is a deal.
Calling people fools and morons and implying that they are not worthy enough to be online is not a solution. It is not acceptable to expect an average user to know all by themselves how to implement a firewall and install and maintain antivirus and antispyware--either they have to learn from somewhere or rely on experts for assistance, and both are going to take time and usually money.
The fact that we have to worry about all these precautionary measures to make our computers usable is an indication of where the industry is--basically personal computing is at the "model T" stage: now affordable and widespread but very unrefined and with unrealised potential.
Well, close enough.
But I've known several people who have given up on the internet because of spam, nevermind spyware.
My wife is one. She really doesn't care for computers much. She only started using email when I was in Europe on business for a week, and our schedules made phone calls difficult. She liked it enough to keep using it, but she never used it much. So when she was getting several hundred spams a week, vs 1 or 2 real emails a week, she just gave up. She goes to the Yelow Pages and information and calling friends rather than using the web. I can't say that I blame her.
I think the best thing we can do is apply 19th century Texas justice. We can start with the UT student they just busted. If he's guilty, string him up from the highest light pole on I35 for the whole world to see. Run it on every news program for a week; ``Spammers, we're coming for you.''
These guys are costing us hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, and wasting the single, most precious commodity we have -- time. By intergalactic ore hauler loads.
I would be carefull not to ever give them your credit card.
Alot of worms install keyboard loggers.
I would have politely lectured them and told them a worm/virus could cost them their business and lawsuits.
if they must go on the net use a different pc but keep the credit card machine secure and used only for transactions.
I use to work for Jason's Deli and while mapquest is used for the delivery drivers on the transaction POS so we knew where we were going, someone browsed an internet that installed a worm and shutdown the business.
Today its firewalled and only www.mapquest.com will go through.
http://saveie6.com/
This week alone I have helped several people in my personal life and co-workers get rid of junk either they or the person before them had installed on their machine.
If these folk are taking their virus ridden, spyware laden computers from the network.... well great!
I hate to be that guy and say they should not use a computer but it's true. I would cut them some slack a year ago but to be complaining that the spyware you installed on your computer is the last straw and you are giving up your dsl? All I can say is...bye!
I have a friend who lives a few doors away. He's been having a lot of trouble with spyware. Porn ads popping up all day long. It was making his PC a pain to use even after a neighbor spent a few hours trying to clean it out. This same friend also likes to tell me about how much audio and video he's downloaded he's downloaded using the web and p2p.
It's pretty obvious what's going on. Your machine gets cluttered with spyware if you spend time on sketchy web sites downloading all and sundry and doesn't otherwise.
My solution is pretty simple - if I'm going to download porn off the web I use a Mac.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
MiniMac, like MiniMe, is immune to spyware for now. However, if you have ever used email on a mac, you will know that spam is not a "to windows only" phenomenon!
" people just have to have those silly apps that only work in windows, for them, the future is not so bright"
Ir maybe you really do think that "email" is a silly windows-only app?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
At some point, "blame the user" becomes tired. Yes, he should have had backups, and/or the originals stored somewhere secure. Better/different virus protection would also help. However, at some point, the blame has to fall on the people that point this together. Tying the OS to its applications and making them all have authority with one another is the low point. Done to control and manipulate customers, as well as make usage easier, it makes any security hole threatening. When DRM hits and the users gets locked out of his computer while the spammers and virus writers get access, the cries will only get louder. Yes, there are bad people out there, but giving them the keys to the front door and the location of my wallet without telling me probably isn't a good way to help users secure themselves.
I don't maintain my car myself. I'm lazy enough to get my oil changes done, and it's easy enough to keep basic tabs on my car that I can use it. If my car required 30 min. of maintenance a day to run, and running around to get parts and software upgrades, I probably would find a way to use it a lot less, and lots of people would give their cars up entirely. If computers are expected to be used by everyone, then it isn't reasonable to expect people to put more work into their computers than into their cars or pets. Computers are tools - people want them to just work, or to require a minimal amount of effort to work. Computers sold to the majority of people don't do this, and then everyone's suprised when users get frustrated. For most people, computers aren't fun in and of themselves, but for what they allow us to do. If you want to sell to the mass market, you need to make what they can use, rather than complain that they aren't competent enough to use what's there.
what would happen if Linux became as popular as Windows? Where spyware writers start targeting Linux users? As much as I use (and love) Linux, I can't help but wonder if too much popularity is a bad thing. I know this may sound elitist, but I'm sort of glad that Linux is a niche product; it helps keep the scum (spyware and virus writers) focused on tormenting Windows users. (Not that I'm happy to say that, since I have to provide support for Windows computers, too.) At least for now, I can safely say that I little to worry about concerning my Linux boxes.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
70+ years old and still slaving away at a Wintel desk job? Sad. I get the impression from your posts that you haven't even used a Mac. You seem to be assuming that it's just another OS that is just as difficult to learn as Windows. It's not. I sat my mom, who doesn't even know how to type, in front of a Mac, and in less than an hour she was surfing the web, sending email and listing antiques on eBay, with absolutely no help from me. Her VCR is still blinking 12:00, but that's because it's a totally different technology. Tell your folks to spend an hour at the nearest Apple store, just checking things out. I predict that they will be so impressed by the ease-of-use and true plug-and-play (versus plug-and-pray) compatibility of the Mac OS that they will decide to ditch their home Wintel box(es), retire from their PC-using jobs and find something different and fun to do with the rest of their lives.
I've been reading Slashdot for years, and your post is one of the best I've ever read. You are right on in so many ways. I don't think I can say it better than you did, so I'll just say from my own experience, your're dead right. I'm an electrical engineer, and I work with computers all the time, but I still don't have any desire to mess with firewalls and anti-spyware programs on my home machines. After complete frustration with adware bringing both my home Windows boxes to their knees, I bought a Powerbook G4 about a year ago. No problems with it since then--all I do is run software update when it asks me to. When I wanted to buy my 15 year-old daughter a notebook computer for Christmas, I compared Windows boxes to the Apples, and guess what, the iBook G4 was actually cheaper than comparably equipped Windows boxes, so I bought one. She's been happy with it for over a month, and rarely has any questions about it. I don't work for Apple, but I'm seriously thinking about buying some Apple stock. All the adware/virus issues with Windows, coupled with the iPOD's success and the new $499 Mac and Apple could really start kicking some A$$ in this market. But again, great post. You are the man! (Assuming you're a guy.)
Dell has the option of shipping Firefox on their system. And then when they return the Dell and go buy a Gateway because Gateway can browse the Internet with less problems, they will realize that their Dell is more stable and runs better. If I wete an OEM, I'd offer a "what do you want to do?" screen. (This idea came from HP). But instead of booting into a custom version of Windows if Internet was selected, I would boot into a small version of Linux running Mozilla that was not modifiable. I'd market it as "Spyware-free Internet" gaurenteed. You could even use the "Internet Explorer skin". We need to start demanding OEMs, banks, and other players in this industry to take security out of Microsoft's hands entirely, and into the consumer consciousness. --Sam