Consumer Reports on 'State of the Net'

netbuzz writes "A " State of the Net" survey to be released today by Consumer Reports contends that Americans lost $7 billion over the past two years to malware and myriad online scams. Not surprisingly, a significant portion of this financial pain appears to have been avoidable, as the survey reveals a widespread continuing negligence toward the use of home firewalls and virus protection. As for underage children using MySpace and the like? There, too, the risks in many case look to be self-inflicted, as 13 percent of children fail to meet the 14-year-old age minimum on MySpace, and, as the organization notes: "Those were just the ones the parents knew about."

Comments

What To Do.

[RealProgrammer]

Part of this may sound like preaching to the choir, but bear with me. There is a tendency to want the government to do something about every problem, and the hassle of online scumbaggery is no exception. Individuals (and their guardians) need to take responsibility for their own protection, and not expect either the government to protect them (which it cannot) or for faceless strangers to be kind to them, which a tiny but significant portion will not.

Each of these steps solves roughly half of the remaining problems not solved by the previous ones.

1. A fool and his unarchived data are soon parted. If you want it, make an offline copy of it.
2. Switch to Linux, a Mac, or Anything But Windows. Most of the following only apply if this one won't work for you.
3. Switch to Mozilla Firefox.
4. Buy and install a firewall box.
5. Buy and install a virus scanner.
6. Download and install Lavasoft Ad-Aware or similar spyware detector, even if your virus scanner says it provides that protection.
7. Don't open email with attachments, or respond to spam with so much as a single click. You have been warned.
8. Stay away from porn sites. They're bad for your computer.
9. Stay away from online games except those you know to be crap-free.
10. You don't know that any of them are crap-free.
11. Don't download commercial music except from commercial vendors to whom you pay a fee. Yeah, sucks to be us. But you get what you deserve, and if you're trying to get something for nothing, you'll give something for nothing in return.

So what do you do if your kids download some game, P2P app, or other crapware-laden piece of stupidity? Take away the computer. What if you have several kids, and you don't know who did it? Enlist their aid and hold them all accountable. Tell them that if any of them downloads crapware and the guilty party won't come forward, they all do their homework at the library (for a week or month or whatever).

Re:viruses, malware, et cetera

[UserChrisCanter4]

In addition to a 3DS Max course, I teach computer applications at the high school level. It, along with a few other courses (one called Business Computer Information Systems, Computer Science, and some specialized graphics courses) satisfy the state requirement for one year of computer credits. Those state level requirements are prescribed by the state, and are based on teaching certain concepts within a given type of program. Thus, we aren't told to "teach Word;" rather, we're told that any child passing our class should be able to do functions X, Y, and Z in a word processor. My course spends one semester on computer hardware and MS Office, and the subsequent semester on web design using HTML code and WYSIWYG editors, photo editing in Photoshop, and some simple animation in Flash. For an assortment of reasons, some which I support and some which I don't, nearly all of our software is closed-source. I say this only to provide a standard to analyze your statement:

The vast majority kids are not "computer literate" in any functional sense of the word. Honestly, this makes them much like the vast majority of adults, so it's no real surprise. When children (14-18) enter my class, they understand the mere basics of certain programs - thy understand how to instant message, but not necessarily how to uninstall an IM program. They know that some web-based proxy sites can't get around the myspace filter, but they don't understand what's going on or why it would be easier to type in a proxy server address for their browser. They don't understand the first thing about basic file management, or why naming files with descriptive names is a good idea, or why their Powerpoint presentation that's laden with images and sound won't fit on a floppy disk. And they really, really don't understand that a spreadsheet has uses beyond making tables of stuff, that the word "memory" can have different meanings, why their computer is "running slow", or that the concept of mail merge even exists.

In short, they are exactly like most non-techies that you probably interact with on a daily basis. To say that the people teaching the classes don't know anymore is pretty absurd; I'll grant that there are bad teachers, but it honestly isn't that hard to know more than the average person. In my experience, the people who teach these courses (at least the ones I've met) seem intelligent and experienced enough that they certainly have plenty to teach. They may not be "running apache under Gentoo on their toaster" geeks, but they're educated and intelligent, and (most importantly) they know their material.

At my school, the 10% who are geeks or gunning for extra GPA take our Computer Science AP course. The rest end up in my course or one of the similar ones. I assure you: most kids are not computer literate, and I truly believe they do benefit from some useful computer education.