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

viruses, malware, et cetera

[SolusSD]

I guess I'm not surprised they came up with such a huge figure for dollars lost-- I hate to be the person that's just going to get modded down for this-- but maybe if >80% of computer users werent using windows and there was more diversity on the net (client-wise, at least) viruses and, to a lesser extent, malware wouldn't find it so easy to inflict such damage. A monoculture can be brought to its knees by a common vunerability.

Re:viruses, malware, et cetera

[turnipsatemybaby]

You can't put the blame solely on Windows for this. There's *plenty* that can be done even with a Windows box to protect it. The single easiest step being to plug a cheap $20 router between the computer and the internet. Hell, I'm even starting to see modems with built in routers now.

One problem is education. A bigger problem is that users don't see this as being "their problem". The ISP should be protecting them. The banks should be protecting them. The gov't should be protecting them. They don't feel they need to bear any of the responsibility of what is going on. I remember one old neighbour who's computer was riddled with viruses, and their ISP cut them off. They proceeded to blast the ISP for cutting the service and not not protecting them in the first place.

Until people becoming willing to take responsibility, the education won't happen. Until the education happens, these problems cannot be prevented.

Re:viruses, malware, et cetera

[ColdWetDog]

Have mandatory 'securing your computer' classes at the high school and college levels.

That will work just as well as:

Mandatory driving classes
Mandatory civics classes
Mandatory typing classes

At a population level, people are Just Plain Stupid (TM, patent pending). It's the bell curve - the short bus tends to get pretty crowded.