Is Obsolescence Good Computer Security?

caesar-auf-nihil asks: "I was recently considering a switch from dial-up to something faster (either cable or DSL) but my friend recommended against it since he said I was more secure staying with Dial-Up. His argument was that my connection's slowness and 'not always on' connection gave me better security since I was less of a target for many security threats. Now, I have never gotten infected, nor do I believe my machine is infested with spyware and/or controlling programs as it runs fine, but I wonder if the obsolescence argument is really good or not. Does Dial-Up really protect you or is this a false sense of security and I should just go ahead and pick a faster service and make sure my firewall is a good one and my virus definitions are always up to date?"

Comments

Re:Dial-up does not make you more secure

[utlemming]

Very true. When I was running Windows, I was constaintly having problems with infections. But then again, my laptop was being connected to unsecured and very untrusted networks. Between my schools wifi connection (which was the cleanest), my work's Windows 95/98 network, and then my apartment complex's network, I was constaintly getting slammed with the latest and greatest in virus and spyware. My school bought a site license that allowed them to give Norton Corp. edition to every student, and I had it set to update automatically everyday. But it usually wasn't a virus, but the spyware that managed to get in. And I was running Spybot and Microsoft's Anti-spyware. When I switched over to SuSE Linux 10.0, I can say that the problems stopped. But I will say that my problems with spyware and viruses were caused not because of my computing habits (I applied all the latest patches, used up-to-date spyware/malware/virus programs, refused to use IE, etc), but because my computer was used in hostile enviroment. My apartment complex was so bad that you were lucky to get out on the network to get your email, and they had six 4-mb cable connections load balanced for us guys.