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?"

Comments

Advice To The Netlorn

[ackthpt]

It's rather sad to see the smile fade, the eyes glaze, the jaw set ... but these are what follow when I explain what people need to prepare themsevles for to join the great information highway.

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.

Buy an Apple

[_PimpDaddy7_]

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.

Don't use Dial-up

[tygerstripes]

Sounds silly, but there's a major practical barrier here:

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.

That's not funny, it's how I feel!

[Roadkills-R-Us]

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.

This is such BS

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I bought my wife a PC a year ago. I gave her some simple guidelines: don't view attachments unless you know what they are, don't give out your email address to unknown companies and so on. I downloaded the MS spyware beta the other day and ran it. It found zero spyware.

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.