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Users Worldwide Feel Internet Is 'Safer'
buzzardsbay writes "Baseline Magazine is reporting on a study by Cisco that teases out the differing attitudes about online security among users across the globe. For instance, remote workers worldwide think the internet is getting safer ... except the folks in Italy and Germany. These folks also have a lot of faith in their corporate IT departments as 51 percent said their work computers are more secure than their personal PCs, and nearly half (45 percent) believe they are more vulnerable to malware and hacks when they're working outside their corporate perimeter. Irony of ironies, the Brazilians hold Net security in the highest regard."
How many of those people surveyed have PCs sending out SPAM behind their backs?
"That's the sort of blinkered, philistine pig ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage."-Monty Python
Obviously, these people are looking for safer ways of getting to mugged whilst searching for kiddie porn.
Seems as though if the ruckus about 'cyberwar' and all the espionage supposedly being carried out online is correct, then all these home users whose security is apparently less effective than their corporation's security (though how effective this corporate security is, opposed to its perception, is a matter of question) would be ripe for use as local proxies, hosts for various malware, or local monitoring of 'net traffic for an enterprising spy.
Next program by DHS: Be patriotic, install our red white and blue firewall (and incidental datamining connection monitor)?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
if the Nigerian Princes felt the net to be a perfectly secure place?
The Internet is safer than what? Skinny dipping in the Everglades after dark?
My blog
You are only as safe as the measures YOU employ to protect yourself. Your email may be hosted by the most secure company in the world but if your password is "password" or "firstnamelastname" or "123456789" etc then all their security measures are meaningless.
Likewise, if you're running unpatched versions of XP you could have the most secure password ever yet it's meaningless when you have a rootkit with a keystroke logger that's sending your password to a script kiddy in Russia.
Perhaps people "feel" safer because the marketing departments of certain companies... (Microsoft) tell them they are..
Why is the comment about Brazilians ironic? Anyone want to enlighten me?
I was going to have a witty reply for this, but my computer beat me too it sending out 50,000 e-mails about hot stock picks in the time it took me to read the comments...
I use Linux, I keep my stuff patched/firewalled/well passworded (is that even a word?).
You feel secure for a while, then you get duped into clicking on a goatse/rotten.com type link. *shudder*
Really, that's what bothers me more than anything else. The occasional "Find sexy singles in your area ads" don't really bother nor register to me anymore. However the occasional gore (The disgusting kind, not the ex-vp kind) that lurks on the Internet really gets to me.
The goggles - they do nothing!
and getting vaster every day. Most security is worthless. Its good enough to prevent a majority of threats from getting through, sometimes. The only thing protecting users is the size of the internet combined with the fact that most of them do not have anything of value stored on their computers. The only thing Joe Sixpack has that Evil Hacker wants is his credit card number, which let's face it, is not enough to retire off of. The only other things that can be taken from Joe Sixpack are his resources; CPU and bandwidth. The net result is you would still have to grind out a living as an Evil Hacker, or get into freelance corporate espionage. So yes, the internet seems safer, mainly because its bigger, not because it is technologically more capable of stopping the bad guys from getting you.
(I apologize for rambling, I'm sick in bed hopped up on meds)
These days the ones that were once bitten are twice shy, and if you run a decently updated box with no random cracks from the Intarwebs chances are slim you'll have any problems. Just recently I read that the online banks were starting to decline proposals to increase security - it was rare enough that simply paying up if people got swindled made more sense. In short, I think the people left that are getting suckered for the most part are the ones that'd get suckered by phone, by mail, by fax or any other way you'd get in touch with them.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Of course it'll be safer.
Go from there with your own creativity.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Iran is without internet access. Of course it's safer!
Perhaps it's a double irony in that TFA's Google Earth feed got hacked and Nigeria/Brazil got swapped.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Works on all OSs (well almost) and user editable.
Here's one example. http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
Cheers.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
Tourists in Rio during Carnival? A Hunting trip with Dick Cheney? Driving with Ted Kennedy?
Yeah, you probably won't be harmed, but that doesn't mean it's "safe"
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
While I feel the internet has gotten a whole lot shittier with laws encroaching onto our once pristine wild wild west style play ground. I personally don't feel any less safe. There are risks out there of course, just has there has been for a long time now. But by practicing the same techniques I have for ages I'm fairly confident in my box.
If anything I might be slightly more confident as these days. I've always been a hardware geek and as case mods have come down in price and the software to support them has matured, I now have instantaneous access to system resource utilization and temperatures through various means that allow me to gauge my computer utilization with a glance, contrast that to the task at hand and you know when things are being accessed outside of your control. The cost of a hardware based SPI firewall is within anyones range. Also memory prices are so cheap you can afford the extra 128+ required to leave a software based firewall, anti-virus and network logger running.
And I always delve into windows to ensure maximum resources are available for gaming. So along the way I get to know windows on a level most never do. So all it takes is a quick glance at which processes are running to keep me feeling okay about things.
Really the only thing that worries me are rootkits, but I ran those scanners once in a while. However I don't really know how much faith I should be putting in them... Either way a competent user shouldn't have to much to worry about.
With that being said, I don't think I would put quite as much faith in network security at work, granted the admin's are paid and trained to do what they do. But they also, generally, have an increased workload and many other responsibilities.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Too many amateur websites out there giving permissions away to scriptkiddies, Islamo freaks, and russian mobsters. Where do you think that Bank of American spoof page is coming from?
Eviscerate the Proletariat!
More secure doesn't mean absolutly Secure. 10 years for your measurement isn't really a good frame. It is like saying driving a was was far safer back in the early 1900's. Where only a few people owned cars and if they did they drove them very carfully because they were cheap and a luxery item.
The same with the net back in 1998. Most people use dialup AOL was the king of internet and many people though they were using the internet while never leaving AOL servers. The Buffer Overflow hack was just newly descovered and branded to unpredictible to really be useful. The Browser Wars just got into full swing Active X controls was the new technology that going to kill Java. If you were going to hack into someones system you are better off finding systems with default blank passwords, or weak passwords. Making an internet running virus was near impossible having the fact that Most windows systems were running dialup and it would take to long for the virus to download. And many of the install base didn't have browsers or email clients with the "flexibility" or what I called stupidly deciding that a web browser or email client should have a client side language running on it. (that allows for access to your own files).
But lets compare the Net Today then say 2003. Most Email Services sucessfully filter out Virus Emails and Spam mail. Much of the software has been modified to protect from a lot of buffer overflow errors. Even windows who generally sucks in security now acts like a paranoid person living with a tin foil hat saying when something potentionally dangerious is about to happen, vs. it running automaticlly in 2003 without any human intervention. Every Major Browser has popup blocking and there are very few professional sites that use it. Legit use of Spam has became unprofitible and it dieing, and is no longer considered a way to make a living. People are not longer blindly going to windows and Most people who are using windows are using XP (With a more secure (kinda) NT Kernel) vs 98 or ME back in 2003 XP was still new, the growth in Macs and Linux have lessen the ease that virus can spread and most people now have at least software firewalls but a lot have cheap and afordable hardware firewalls/routers. Compared to back in 2003 where they plugged their computer live into the cable modem.
Are there still attacks going on... Sure but is it safer then 2003 I would say yes. Is it aboslutly secure where you can put your guard down... No abosulutly not.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Feeling safer depends what you're running. I use XP and Linux, feel a fair bit safer when using Linux.
What the applications may be doing in the background when using Windows is another matter. Connect to get an update of a package, and oh by the way, lets send some encrypted "anon" user data, or you need to enable a feature for the package you paid for, and the only way to do it is to do it online - and who knows what that sends about your system (enabling some CODEC'S in Adobe Premier Elements springs to my mind).
Windows has it's browser hooked into the system core, how anyone would feel safe with that when using IE!?! With the recent fuss over Skype, do they still think they are "safe"?
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Users worldwide are idiots.
You couldn't be more right.
I'm in danger every day. When I drive my car I'm in incredible danger. I could die, or worse, be confined in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. If you work construction you are in the most dangerous profession there is. If I'm in a bar I'm in danger of some drunk busting a bottle over my head. If I walk outside I can get struck by lightning. If I cross the street I can be hit by a car.
Danger? I don't think that word means what you people on the internet think it means.
I wrote a slashdot journal last year about a local child molester who died in the Sangamon County Jail. "Klutzo the Clown" was a former policeman, day care worker, clown, and preacher. Klutzo is the guy you and your children need to fear, not some clown on slashdot.
I fear fearmongers more than anyone, because these are the people who want to take away my rights.
Folks who fear the internet yet fearlessly jaywalk at night wearing dark clothing are the same people who, when a gun is pointed at them and the man with the gun says "your money or your life" say "wait a minute, let me think..."
-mcgrew
(Now watch, this guy referenced in an update to this journal will find me and pop a cap in my ass.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Did not have any firewall or other measures.
Internet in my perception became unsafe when all the trash came online.
the internet is safer
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Listen to your guts.
My guts tell me that my data is safe.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
You haven't done much end-user support, have you? People still install Bonzi Buddy, etc. because they want a furry, cute "friend" or whatever screensavers they can find, and click yes to every prompt because they know that way things will work.
The Internet isn't much safer, the users are just as clueless, and water is still wet. The only thing that's improved is defense against automated attacks, which while a very good thing, is still just the tortilla on the enchilada.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
My reply was "Safer than WHAT, exactly?" I've come up with a list of things that are safer than the internet: Harlem. Bagdhad. Suicide Machines. Unwashed store produce. Seriously, considering you can't even trust the companies that claim to produce anti-malware (some of which actually install malware), and there are millions upon millions of more idiots out there than there was 10 years ago... how can you say it's safer? I remember back in 1997, when you could log onto IRC or a Q2 server on Thanksgiving Day and everything was LITERALLY twice as fast just because no one else was around. Back when the worldcom routers would go down and half the internet would just disappear. It's impossible to make the case that more users = more safety. Quite the opposite.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
With services like tinypic and tinyurl and links crafted to use Google's 'inurl:' coupled with 'i'm feeling lucky', it is difficult if not impossible to predict where a link will resolve to...
On the other hand, perhaps you can decipher cryptic links by staring at your status bar, in which case, more power to you.
Cheers.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
Brazilian home PCs are infested with all the kinds of stuff simply because the users do not care at all.. This alone is not enough, though, since pretty much everyone around the world behave like that.
The problem is that ISPs simply don't care.
I work at the Brazilian Gov't and even security reports from me are bluntly ignored by those ISPs.
You may try to report to CAIS (which is supposed to be "the" security network center in Brazil for the national academic network) and you know what? You'll receive and acknowledge response and that's it, nothing else will happen.
The only time they do something were in cases such as fake Paypal pages, I believe because there was money involved.
An example on how things work here:
Once we complained to CAIS about this scum from this university which were deliberately sending their spam (not an infected machine sending random viagra messages) and guess what CAIS did.. Exactly, nothing.
I suppose that junk is related to some project they've managed to get public money from, because we complained so many times and nothing were done (there's _always_ something fishy involved).
Until I picked up the phone called that university directly and told them I would block them completely unless they stopped that spam.
The guy who answered me simply started to say he would talk to the Rector, to politicians XYZ and who knows else, and implied that I could get into trouble.
To shorten the history.. In the end we've managed to stop that junk. But see how much did it cost.
I know so many rotten histories on Brazilian Internet, from the gov't side, from the private companies... A book could be written about that.
It does seem to me that my last two ISP's, Time-Warner and Comcast, despite all their numerous faults, do a pretty good job of keeping worms in check on their networks.
Mind you...I could be deluded. But for various games I cannot get to work through my router I have to run XP without it, and even with my balls hanging out there I haven't had any trouble..that I know of. I do run Ethereal that way from time to time and it seems pretty trafficless except for ARP's and such.
expandfairuse.org
Well, at least I know the idiot mod who can't recognize humor isn't going to spend that point where it could really do some damage.
Just callin' it like I see it.