FTC Kills Scareware Scam That Duped Over 1M Users

coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today got a court to at least temporarily halt a massive 'scareware' scheme, which falsely claimed that scans had detected viruses, spyware, and pornography on consumers' computers. According to the FTC, the scheme has tricked more than one million consumers into buying computer security products such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus. The court also froze the assets of Innovative Marketing, Inc. and ByteHosting Internet Services, LLC to preserve the possibility of providing consumers with monetary redress, the FTC stated."

Comments

I hope this helps this problem

[vwpau227]

At the computer store where I work in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, we see at least 3-4 computers each week with these rogue anti-virus and anti-spyware applications. These programs are a real pain to deal with, both for our customers and for our computer store as well, since the programs are often difficult to remove and take up a lot of time that would otherwise be used to help our customers find solutions that make them more productive.

However, given the fact that new versions of these programs are being developed on a regular basis (for example, as of late we are seeing a new rogue program called Trusted AntiVirus), and the fact that the organizations behind them are often located offshore and in multiple jurisdictions, I wonder how much a dent this judgement will make into the scammers' operations. Hopefully, at least, this will be a start.

Part of the problem, of course, is user education. We have users that receive warning messages that tell them that this program is possibly a virus, and ask them if they would like to run the program anyway. Many users that do not know any better will run the program even though the warning is telling them this may not be a good idea. Helping the user understand what the legitimate warnings are on the system tends to reduce the problem.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[lalena]

I agree that going after these scareware companies is too difficult, which is why we should go after the advertising networks that help them post their ads instead.
According to the article "The defendants used an elaborate ruse that duped Internet advertising networks and popular Web sites into carrying their advertisements."
Even if you are duped, once you see the scareware ad you should revoke the ad account for that company.
Most sites have a way of clicking that a blog post, wiki article, ... should be reviewed or removed because it is inappropriate, but you never see something like this for an ad.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[whoever57]

Part of the problem, of course, is user education

Part of the problem is that these users have administrator privileges. I have seen many posts here on /. and elsewhere that claim it is quite possible to run as a non-administrator under Windows. In a corporate environment it should be possible to remove admin privileges (unless those who posted such claims were lying).

Personally, I was amused by this scamware, seeing it scan my PC and find various infected DLLs -- the only problem being that my Linux PC doesn't have any DLLs (except for a few in my WINE installation).

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[lord_sarpedon]

Are you...running malware in WINE for fun?

You _do_ realize that this grants write access to all your priceless documents in ~
The UNIX security model (as with Windows) doesn't give a shit about protecting _users_, just the system. A terribly dated and broken concept.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[whoever57]

Are you...running malware in WINE for fun?

No. Perhaps you don't understand. The "scan" is totally bogus -- it "ran" in my SeaMonkey browser under Linux and "detected" various infected DLLs. Since I don't have any DLLs on my system, the "scan" is obviously a scam.

Now, I just wanted to qualify the "I don't have any DLLs" by making a throaway remark that there are actually some on my system as part of WINE. This does not mean I ran the malware under WINE.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem is that lots of software (e.g. World of Warcraft and anything that includes Punk Buster) assumes that you have more than normal user privileges. So while you can do it, it makes everyday tasks a pain.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[Pharmboy]

Well of course you don't see something like that for an ad. The advertisers are PAYING real money. The only reason you see a "click here if this is inappropriate" on any website is so they can cover their own ass and prevent getting sued. It is "good faith" effort to remove stuff that is liable or DMCA. Many of these sites are so 3rd tier, they don't give a damn what bad ads are on their website, as long as they get paid.

Silly me, I still think that part of the cause is that Windows is entirely too easy to pwn.

There is enough blame to go around, but the one thing that is universal is money. The crappy forum/blog/wiki websites want the ad money regardless of content, the scammers want your dollars, MS wants to overcharge and underdeliver, many people are too lazy to learn about their computer and would rather pay the extortion (which doesn't end the problem) than keep their systems up to date, no matter how easy you were to make it.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I just wanted to qualify the "I don't have any DLLs" by making a throaway remark that there are actually some on my system as part of WINE. This does not mean I ran the malware under WINE.

Never give more information than is necessary, it will confuse some people.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[xlsior]

You can't lock out the primary user of a home computer from installing programs. No matter how many hoops you have to jump through (excplicitely authorize, enter password, etc.) there are still a ton of people that will jump through all the hoops and still end up with the garbage installed.

After all, keep in mind that there were a million people that were esentially tricked into pulling out their creditcard and paying money to these people. Removing admin rights and having to enter a sudo password before they can install the malware in question still doesn't change the fact that they honestly thought they 'needed' to install the program in question in the first place.

You can only do so much to protect people from themselves, and in cases like there there isn't much you can do other than prosecute / sue the snot out of the companies doing the malicious advertising and unfounded scaremongering.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[FLEB]

McAfee was installed; this software bypassed and disabled McAfee.

Probably a relief. It takes some sophisticated software to get McAfee to stop begging for money. Where could one obtain this miracle malware?

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[Drakin020]

If everyone knew how to properly use a computer, you and I would be out of a job.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[Timothy Brownawell]

Even though users can have their files easily restored in minutes from a backup?

What backup?

And since the malware can't infect at the system level it is then a simple matter for an administrator to nix the offending files?

Is "administrator" a fancy term for "geeky neighbor kid"?

The only files that matter are the user's files, everything else can be fixed with apt-get and a livecd. If those files are messed up, it does not matter that the stock OS files are still intact. The *nix security model is good for protecting users from eachother, while malware protection requires protecting users from themselves. Probably the only ways to get the latter are some unmaintainable SELinux config or a highly inconvenient browser-in-a-VM and email-in-a-different-VM setup, and even those can't ever be idiotproof.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[MaskedSlacker]

Administrator is a fancy term for the guy who logs in as root and can kill any misbehaving processes launched by the user.

Again, backups. I just lost 6 months of work to a hard drive crash two days ago that will cost me $1200 to recover. Mechanical failures are wonderful things. Now I have backups in my apartment and remote backups setup. Backups are trivially cheap, there is no reason not to use them other than your own stupidity. Yes, I was stupid not to have one two days ago.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[dragonturtle69]

I saw that once too, on Firefox 3.0/Suse 11. A popup appeared from where the SysTray would be, if running XP with the default theme. If it had been on XP, and unwary user would have easily believed it to be a legitimate XP security warning. Another user that I recently converted to Linux saw this on Ubuntu 8.1/Unknown browser, and took it for a good thing that Linux prevented an intrusion. The sad part is that they would have provided sudo if prompted.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[lord_sarpedon]

Yeah. That's right. Who gives a flying fuck if files get deleted? Because everyone backups nightly to tape and properly labels them before permanent storage. Or not.

You can argue that there's significant overlap between the people with malware and the people that lose stuff to hard drive failure. But when's the last time that a widespread virus _deleted everything_ for the hell of it? It's a business now! The last intentionally destructive one I heard of held documents _for ransom_ instead. The goal is to hide or at least blend in, for as long as possible, to make a profit by some means.

I should have said 'read/write access'. The tricky bit is when information gets _leaked_, you see. Then the attacker has _important_ passwords (think firefox profile) and confidential information. Your bank account is compromised and you just wiped your ass with whatever accountability requirements your organization is held to.

You don't need superuser to send spam, either.

If that's still too much for you, then in short, non-root compromises are a BIG FUCKING DEAL.

Security as it stands is total bullshit because any "unprivileged" executable can easily take you from behind _without you ever knowing_. Privilege escalation is merely a means to do the SAME THING but sneakier, or across more accounts. Remote exploits aim to do the SAME THING. Rub some braincells together and think about this. The current security model protects users from users. You (the user) can and will get fucked over, but things have been designed so that doesn't affect anyone else. This was adequate - at the time.

Apps are not their users. Apps should not run under the user's account. Opening a document is to be done via a privileged (as in "running as the user") daemon which displays a file-open dialog and maps the selected file(s) into the app's sandbox.

Re:I hope this helps this problem

[mpe]

The "scan" is totally bogus -- it "ran" in my SeaMonkey browser under Linux and "detected" various infected DLLs. Since I don't have any DLLs on my system, the "scan" is obviously a scam.

As would be the case if it offered to "scan your registry". No doubt even on a Windows system such sites could list DLLs or registry keys which don't actually exist on the system in question.
This is like phishing emails where you may not even have an account with the bank in question and even if you do you never told them that email. Or even someone phoning up, claiming to be your Uncle John who needs money in a hurry. Where even if you actually have an uncle called "John" the caller sounds nothing like them.
Technology such as telephones, email, websites, etc Should be acting as a double edged sword. In that whilst it allows such crooks the the ability to target more people than if they had to physically visit people in order to try and con them, as was their only option in the past. It at the same time tends to leave trails back to the criminals. Thus it should be easier for law enforcement to do something about them. If law enforcement were actually interested in doing so that is...

Your computer is broadcasting an IP address!

[DelitaTheFridge]

Click here to fix it, we promise.

Re:Your computer is broadcasting an IP address!

[corsec67]

Sure, it is 127.1.

Have fun with it.

Re:Your computer is broadcasting an IP address!

[iamhassi]

My IP is 192.168.0.1

my login is admin. my password is admin

Please fix my computer broadcasting!

Re:Your computer is broadcasting an IP address!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with all the gay porn on there? Are you some kind of homo?

Oh, shit...

Re:Your computer is broadcasting an IP address!

[Kent Recal]

This was (deservedly) modded funny but this scam really exists! (WARNING link points to the scam site, click at your own risk, you may broadcast your ip address to them...)

Re:Your computer is broadcasting an IP address!

[FLEB]

The family-portrait photo, of the child riding a dog, on the imaginary software box, that's a clear indication of quality. I could see how someone could be taken in.

Re:Your computer is broadcasting an IP address!

[Vegeta99]

hahahahahaha they're SOOOOOOO wrong it says my IP address is 64.8.85.43 and its really 192.168.1.101!!!! go to hell h4x0rz!

[/n00b]

I'll one up that.

[RulerOf]

My university has seen so many students (and even staff!) with variants of this.

One of my users managed to get it on a fully patched XP machine that I somehow forgot to install Symantec on (yeah, stupid), with basic User privileges.

Of course, I've seen it a million other times too, but those people were all running with admin privileges.

Re:I'll one up that.

[gad_zuki!]

Really? If it lived soley in user space then it would be trivial to remove and couldnt do all the tricks that it does, namely installing services, registering dlls, and over-writing system files.

  One of my users tried to install it and it failed. Something tells me your limited user config isnt standard. There's no shortage of shops that give write access to the c: drive and large parts of the registry because theyre too lazy to find the specific file or key they really need.

Re:I'll one up that.

[RulerOf]

That shop was a small shop, and the users need a little more slack with their machines since I only talk to them about once a week. I don't have backdoors like the task scheduler locked up, so if you *really* wanted it, you could have admin on these boxes, and a couple apps (I hate quickbooks) require it, so there's a few RunAs scripts and so on that could port you into adminship.

Nonetheless, I was still impressed.

Hey you!

[RulerOf]

You've got a virus!

Pay me or I won't tell you what it is!

The sad thing is that people fall for it.

I've actually had the following conversation:

"What antivirus program was that?"
"Oh let me see here... [Horrible Trendy Name]"
"When did you install it?"
"I don't know."

I told him to call his credit card issuer.

Though, as if that's not enough, my neighbor recently couldn't understand how a dialog that, after analyzing basically indicated his computer was "too secure" wasn't a bad thing.

I have them beat

[LurkingOnSlashdot]

Sure these might just be "scamware"... but I beat them at their own game by installing all 5 of the mentioned programs. The combined power is sure to be effective even if one alone is not!

It's easy to stop ...

[tomhudson]

Turn off the $$$ - the credit card companies know that payments to certain entities are for scam crap just from the number of complaints, but they still do nothing because, let's face it, a million sales @ $30 a pop == $30,000,000. 3.5% of that is over a million bucks. It's not in their immediate financial interest to turn off the tap.

Re:It's easy to stop ...

[omeomi]

It's not in their immediate financial interest to turn off the tap.

Nor is it their responsibility to make sure their customers spend their money wisely. And they can't just indiscriminately stop processing payments made to certain companies...they'd get sued.

Re:It's easy to stop ...

[flerchin]

You seem to have some intelligent points to make. However, I can't decipher them. I'm not trying to be a pedant, but can you take a second and try to rework your post to make it more clear? In particular, can you elaborate on your point about ebay not encrypting passwords?

Re:It's easy to stop ...

[myxiplx]

Yeah, just like they did when they stopped taking payments to AllofMP3.com.

oh, wait...

I have WinXp Viruses on my Mac!

[JimMcc]

According to these guys, my Mac is infected with Windows XP viruses. Ok, now I'm not that gullible, but the sad part is that there are plenty of people that are and believe whatever they read. Of course these are the same people that send birthday cards to little whats-his-name who wants to be in the Guinness's Book of World Records.
 
At one level I'm sympathetic, but at another I think that people need to learn to be more than a little skeptical on the internet. So instead of getting money returned to the people that purchased this junk, how about using it to fund advertising programs that politely ask "How can you be so stupid?" (Obviously not saying it like that.) Education is the only thing that will change this in the long run. Otherwise they'll just fall for whatever the next trick is that comes along.

Re:I have WinXp Viruses on my Mac!

[cheekyboy]

So america was taken over by the commies but the populace never knew it.

Better late than never

[erroneus]

The FTC is supposed stop and punish fraudsters. This is their job. I can't understand why it has taken this long.

Re:Better late than never

[Narcocide]

The answer to why is probably simpler than you think - they don't "get" this internet thing either.

Re:Get a rope!

[Trepidity]

I'll volunteer for the firing squad.

Finally! We usually have to get someone sentenced on trumped-up charges to get our weekly execution, because nobody ever responds to the call for volunteers.

Re:Old news

[techno-vampire]

I find that interesting. My laptop is almost 10 years old, with a PII 233 Mhz chip and maxed out at 96Meg of RAM, but I have Linux running on it. And, I've never had the slightest difficulty connecting it to the Internet or surfing the web. Either you have some very weird hardware or you haven't tried very hard.

Re:A fool and his money...

[Keramos]

I believe this is called Windows Live OneCare, right?

Re:Old news

[the_bard17]

That's because the Linux community has collectively decided that *you* don't deserve to run it, so we put in special code to keep you off the 'net. It's better for everybody this way.

;oD :op

Helllooo.... FCC ... um, Stopsign.com ?

[Lost Penguin]

If I go to stopsign.com it will detect all sorts of Windows nastyware on my Linux box.
They have ads on Direct TV.....

Re:Old news

[Jamie's Nightmare]

...and if all you want to do is surf the web, sure, Linux or even an old WebTV box is just dandy. Problem is, people are used to doing more with their computer. That's where Linux leaves most people with the feeling of holding a wet fish.

you KNOW no amount of protection is going to be enough - you're gonna catch SOMETHING.

I know your trolling, but it's worth pointing out this is dead wrong. I'm using Windows with no anti-virus/spyware programs and the firewall built into my DSL Router. The one and only time I've personally had a virus was in 1997, when my then idiot girlfriend downloaded and executed an IRC script. The best defence is knowledge. Period. There is no OS in the world that is secure with ignorance behind the keyboard. Sure, Linux offers a huge huge security advantage because of it's obscurity, but that's a double edged sword that points back to my first point. People want more out of their PC, and I can't blame them. You want protection? Start with you. Those who rely on others first are usually the ones to get screwed first.

Hoard your clicks

[Nefarious Wheel]

...The only reason you see a "click here if this is inappropriate" on any website is so they can cover their own ass and prevent getting sued...

Actually, there's another reason. If you click on anything at all, they can record your address in their web journals and tick a box labeled "This person is a potential mark". It's one of the reasons why I close these bogus displays by going around and closing them from the operating system. I do not trust any button or other clickable control presented to me from any window that I didn't specifically ask to see. Even the little X in the top right corner, they can emulate those controls with controls of their own, and can record the fact that you've paid them a bit of attention. And for such people, the less attention you pay them the better.

Re:Hoard your clicks

[Ihmhi]

I know a good bit about computers, but I had never heard about anything like this. Would this actually be possible - emulating the entire thing? I'm sure the X boxes and whatnot would be easy, but what about the right-click context menus?

Furthermore, why isn't Adblock stopping these things in the first place?

Re:Hoard your clicks

[pxlmusic]

because, as the previous poster mentioned, coupling it with NoScript (along with a good AdBlock list) can ensure that you see little to none of that crap.

i've been doing it quite a while and it has saved me from so much potential bullshit on my computer.

i get a few calls a week (cable hsi support) from people with these scareware programs on their machines. usually, i recommend they get a professional to clean their computer or will even go so far as to recommend a full system wipe.

it may take an hour or so to reload Windows, the drivers, system tweaks, etc. and only a few minutes for them to go right back to the same sites that got them there in the first place.

not only that, but getting your average user to use Firefox, let alone NoScript...forget about it.

Re:Hoard your clicks

[Whiteox]

Furthermore, why isn't Adblock stopping these things in the first place?

Because they are not ads.
That's the dumb thing about the whole 'protect your pc' scam which IMHO is bigger than most people think.

In the late 90's The big 3 US antiviral companies only scanned for viruses and left the door open for other US companies to provide software firewalls like Zone Alarm.
The European antivirals however went a step further by not distinguishing virus from worms or trojans and started to include spyware in their scan databases.
As time went on, pretty much everyone is offering 2 or 3 tiered scanning systems that incorporate firewalls, phishing, popups, malware, spyware, rogueware, trojans, worms and viruses.
In 2008/9 there are a few more 'threats' like rootkits and the very latest are 'botscans' like http://mtc.sri.com/
Trend Micro have their own too.... http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/rubotted ... It's the flavor of the month!

Now MS is getting its act together and are doing what they should have in the first place, is to block holes and to provide a level of free security scans for their products.

The question that interests me the most is what is pressuring MS to do this?
Are they growing a conscience? Or do they realise that their precious OS is the main cause of most of the internet abuse in the world?

In other news, Symantec/Norton have rewrote their internet suite (due to complaints I bet) and are offering 3 months for free (maybe Australia only?)! http://www.asecondchance.com.au/ I didn't know if I should laugh or feel sympathetic.

The abuse that internet aware MS systems are exposed to is massive and a lot of people from both sides are making lots of money. Money to be made 'protecting the pc' and money to be made by attacking it and money to be made by 'cleaning it'.
I deal with this sort of stuff every day and there is not one single product - professional or free, that can identify, delete and repair all the threats out there.

And yes, while the ball is rolling and money is to be made, then the game goes on.

Alternate title: FTC Identifies Over 1M Morons

[Spatial]

In an unrelated story, the FTC has invested in some extremely large ovens in an effort to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign energy sources. They claim the new fuel is actually self-perpetuating and that "There is an unlimited supply here at home."

Re:Old news

[Hemogoblin]

Well you may not have problems with your hardware, but that doesn't mean others don't. Since we're giving personal anecdotes, I'll give you mine.

To give you an idea of my computer skills, I've installed Linux on three of my computers over the last 5 years, though I never really used it too much. I'm "fluent" with Windows. I have some experience with C++, so using the shell and so forth doesn't bother me too much. I'm not a developer or anytihng like that though. In other words, I'm pretty much the "best-case" inexperienced user.

That said, every time I tried to install Linux, I ALWAYS have problems. The first time it took me literally two days of frustration before it was in a usuable state. I define usable as "being able to reliably hit the power button, boot with no problems, log in, and surf the internet". It would take too long to go through all the problems I had.

More recently, I just installed Linux on my laptop two days ago, and it took me over four hours to get my wireless internet to work correctly. I figured out how to use ndiswrapper on one of my previous installs, but it didn't solve the problem this time around. Eventually I figured out the problem had to do with the order of drivers being loaded. That's right, to surf the internet I had to learn about crap like modprobe, how to run scripts at startup, etc. All the sysadmins here probably think it's easy, but it's nearly impossible for inexperienced users like me to learn. The worst part was finding a well written bug report on the ubuntu tracker which listed my exact problem, but was closed with the reason "This is a well known problem, just google it"... like I hadn't been doing that for hours.

Anyway, my point is that even though Linux is mostly awesome and everything mostly "just works", there are still some stuff that doesn't. You can blame broadcom or whoever for the problems, but if those few things still exist and are frustrating enough to turn off a dedicated and best-case-inexperienced user, then it still needs more work if you want everyone to use it.

Sign me up!

[whizzleteats]

You mean there's anti-virus software that will find pornography on my computer? Will it show it to me as well? :D

Is it the same Sam Jain

[the_other_one]

I wonder if the Sam Jain referenced in the article is the same Sam Jain behind efront. There was plenty of good reading on fuckedcompany.com way back then when the ICQ logs were released on the net.

Re:2 solutions

[Fnord666]

Now I will agree, the majority of people, regardless of age, is below average.

Here he demonstrates those math skills he was talking about.

They can't do that!

[bensafrickingenius]

How am I supposed to put food on my table if people don't have the opportunity to destroy their systems with a single click anymore? My computer repair business is doomed. Doomed, I say!

Claimed my Linux box had viruses in the registry

[Rick17JJ]

On several occasions have run across aggressive annoying advertisements which popped-up claiming to have detected viruses and spyware on my computer. On each occasion, I was using Linux and browsing the Internet with Firefox. I normally do not get pop-ups when using Firefox, but some scareware advertisers do still know how to make pop-ups appear.

Earlier this year, I had just installed a brand new copy of Kubuntu Linux on a brand new hard disk in my computer. It did not (and still does not) have Windows or any Microsoft products installed on it. I had also installed a firewall and had it behind a router which also had a firewall with all ports closed to the outside world. I had even installed all the latest security updates.

If I remember correctly, this is roughly what happened next. A day or two later, as I was browsing the Internet with Firefox, an ad popped up saying that they had detected several types of viruses and spyware running on my computer. It then asked if I want to have my hard disk scanned for viruses. I closed the advertisement without giving permission. Then another pop-up, with a progress bar, appeared, which claimed that it as scanning drive C: for viruses. I thought, that was odd, since Linux computers do not have a drive C. Before long, a pop-up appeared which said that Microsoft had detected references to viruses and spyware in my registry. That also seemed odd, since Linux does not even have a registry. Furthermore, I thought, what was a Microsoft pop-up doing on my Linux computer. Besides, at least last that I have heard, there still have not yet been any Linux viruses successfully circulating in the wild.

Finally, they asked me to click on a link and purchase their product, so that my computer could be disinfected. At no point in the process of supposedly scanning my hard disk without permission, did they seem to notice or comment on the fact that I was using Linux.

It's ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed that it's taken this long for something to be done about this. I'm also amazed at the magical protective perception field around them. They're not just scams, they're viruses. If they were written by some 14 year old in their parents basement, heavily armed goons would sweep in and drag them off to jail to face felony charges for unauthorized access to a computer, distributing a virus, etc. The protection racket they're running using their viruses is icing on the cake.

The fact is, these are viruses and they're not just spread by people voluntarily downloading programs they believe to be anti-virus software due to scary pop-ups. These things use exploits in windows and web browsers to infect peoples system whether or not they choose to install them, then they generate messages that can truthfully claim that the computer is infected with a virus. Having endured hell working in tech support I've seen plenty of infections by this crap.

So, on the one hand, it's good that someone is finally doing something. On the other hand, where the hell are the criminal charges? Why is it the FTC doing something and not the FBI? Because the criminal scum behind this throw on the trappings of a business they become sacrosanct and get civil actions where the rest of us mere mortals would be put away for life. What the freaking hell!

Re:The obvious truth

[Anpheus]

Is the FTC going to crack down on politicians now too? This is fantastic!

Blaming the User

[Detritus]

If this is the same scam that I've seen lately, have a little sympathy for the end user. The ad generates a nasty dialog box that can only be killed by forcing the browser to quit. The alternative is to "agree" to let them scan your PC. I'm paranoid enough about browser security bugs that there is no way in Hell that I would agree to that. The fact that their ad can create such a dialog box seems like a browser bug to me. Have you stopped beating your wife [Y/N]?

Re:Old news

[arkhan_jg]

Out of interest, since you're running no AV/spyware scanners - how do you KNOW you're not and haven't been infected? I've seen all sorts of nasties that install and run silently. Including ones that don't require social engineering to install.

Firewalls protect against direct attacks, but they don't stop iffy attachments such as the latest .wri exploit, or exploits in the browser (and firefox isn't entirely immune either, though it's a lot safer than IE)

Linux offers a huge security advantage because it's better designed. Apache is still more popular than IIS, and has a had tiny, tiny amount of the exploits than IIS has had over the years, though IIS has improved a lot lately.

Even if I accept your premise that all you need is knowledge to protect your systems, which I don't, expecting all users to be expert technicians simply to browse the internet is unrealistic. Some measures to protect themselves, sure - but specialization requires time, and non-IT people rather need to spend that learning other things.

Equally, people may well not have the time to learn how to use linux, which is fair enough. Based on the criteria that many have for linux, windows isn't ready for the desktop either. If linux had 90% market share and everybody used it already, windows would be struggling hard to get any users.

Re:Old news

[dword]

How the heck can this be modded as Troll? Really, people, for most users, computers are simply tools, like VCRs and we expect everything to run out of the box (like it is when you just go to a store and pay and you get a computer which you can use for games and movies and internets - surprise, it's probably running Windows XP/Vista). Some people really don't have the time to tweak their operating system just to watch some movies or use their webcam on Yahoo! Messenger, etc. I have paid for two distros and - no surprise - they didn't work out of the box like Windows did. I just install Windows, put in a CD, click a button, reboot and my computer's ready for use. Until Linux will have the same simplicity for the users, it doesn't have a chance.

This is not trolling, this is fact for people that are too busy doing other things instead of turning into geeks.

Re:Old news

[TheLink]

Windows isn't really the problem[1].

If these millions of people were running Ubuntu they'd still be infected by malware.

Why? Because these people thought the malware was _good_ software. They would do whatever seems reasonable to them to install it. If it means downloading and executing something, or even entering an admin password, they would do it.

There have been windows viruses that spread via password protected zip files - victims would have to enter the password in the email to unzip the zipfile, then launch it. Many did.

The authorities should just be more active in prosecuting such cases of fraud. Because that's what the scareware scam is - mass fraud. Such scammers cause far more harm than that silly Brit who hacked into US military computers to look for evidence of UFOs.

Once you start jailing scammers the amount of spam we get will be less - because there's a fair bit of scam spam too.

[1] Linux isn't much more secure than Windows XP SP3. Fact is Windows XP SP3 provides better sandboxing than many Linux distros. When you launch some new unsigned program, Windows often prompts you to say that the program is trying to make outbound network connections. Ubuntu, Suse don't do that by default. They have apparmor and SELinux but if the average sysadmin finds them a pain to deal with, they're not suitable for even the more knowledgeable users.

I have made suggestions to Ubuntu and Suse to try to make sandboxing better (better than windows and anything out there that I'm aware of), but I don't see very much progress happening.