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

No wonder...

[MarcoG42]

When I was in school I was punished for doing anything with a computer that wasn't within the teacher's scope of instruction; making spreadsheets and word processing. Most parents know next to nothing about how to operate a PC outside of simple browsing and email. Anything else is intimidating techno-wizardry. Teaching more advanced computer classes in grade school could easily reduce that "cost." I've found parents are more than willing to take little Bobby's advice on computer related topics, because at least he can program the damned VCR.