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Microsoft VP Suggests 'Net Tax To Clean Computers
Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft's Vice President for Trustworthy Computing, Scott Charney, speaking at the RSA conference in San Francisco, has floated an interesting proposal to deal with infected computers: Approach the problem of dealing with malware infections like the healthcare industry, and consider using 'general taxation' to pay for inspection and quarantine. Using taxes to deal with online criminal activity is not a new idea, as demonstrated by last year's Louisiana House vote to levy a monthly surcharge on Internet access to deal with online baddies."
I've been virus free for decades now, following these basic rules, and without running A/V save a monthly offline Clam scan to make sure I haven't caught a case of the stupids when I wasn't looking.
I'd rather see ISPs voluntarily cracking down on spam-generating machines than be forced to pay a tax in an attempt to make up for my neighbor*'s ignorance.
*For extremely large values of "neighbor".
See I read your rant, and the one above it as "I used Norton's once so all virus scanners are bad".
I've been using Avast for the last few years. Free for home use and a damn good product.
A) Sure it updates almost every day - but it has almost no impact on my network (and I'm from Oz where "Broadband" means a bit faster than dial up).
B) Its impact when scanning is not noticable. It scans the file you modify or try to open.
C) WTF? What defaults? The "I can download and run viruses by default" defaults?
D) Avast 99% of the time is a pair of icons in your system tray. If the look and feel of your virus scanner is one of you concerns then your worried about the wrong thing...
E) Avast doesn't constantly use CPU time. A decent virus scanner of any kind would us OS Hooks to identify when it needs to look at files/processes. It won't need to be doing anything unless you are and then it only needs a quick look at the file/process to see if it recognises it.
F) Avasts free license expires every 12 months. It takes around a minute to renew. Big deal.
G) *sigh* Seriously. There are millions of gamers around the world that have virus scanners installed. There's also quite a number of game developers with virus scanners installed. When was the last time that you read that your virus scanner should be disabled before playing game ? Sure the downloads of updates can cause a few moments of lag - but big deal.
H) I'm sorry but WTF? Sure Sony's rootkit can be considered a threat. But REAL threats are actually more things like Confiker, Trojans etc. Viruses etc. that (a) might destroy your PC, (b) be used as part of a botnet, (c) steal your personal data etc.
You're worried about how you virus scanner looks, and a slight interruption to your gaming, but not about the impact of having a virus. The fact that that virus may wipe your machine, cause your machine to be responsible for attacking other machines, or cause masses of SPAM e-mail to be sent out doesn't concern you? I take it then that your ISP doesn't care that you might be responsible for infecting other machines, sending SPAM etc.
Take your tinfoil hat off and go out and get some sunshine.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Actually I would recommend Comodo AV over MSS, and here is why. I have seen several PCs come across my desks in the past few months with users complaining that "something was wrong but I don't know what" and come to find that after several hours, some after specific actions, some for no reason at all, MSS would go "runaway" and consume nearly all the CPU and thrash the hell out of the drive, even though no scan was scheduled or new files added.
Now don't ask me why it did that, fuck if I know, I'm not an expert on security scanning engines, just a humble PC repairman. I gave up finally on MSS when I myself experienced a "runaway" on my own PC. I had done the same thing I had done a thousand times before-loaded some files into IMGBurn for backup, when MSS went runaway and started sucking up nearly 90% of all 4 cores and thrashing the hell out of my hard drive. Since I had a service call to do I figured "well I'm sure it will be finished doing whatever by the time I get back" but when I got back nearly 3 hours later MSS was still thrashing away. I tried excluding the folder IMGBurn was to burn files from, no luck. The only way I got it to stop was to uninstall it. That's when I decided to go Comodo for my Windows 7 like I had for my XP machines and stop recommending MSS.
So I don't know if an update borked it or what, but I'd stay away from MSS for the time being. As for this "tax"? Total bullshit, as it is NOT the users fault! I repeat it is NOT the users fault, as every damned OEM kills autoupdates at the factory and the users don't realize when they buy a new machine it is crippled. All of the machines that have crossed my desk in...oh it must be at least since SP2 for XP, have been pre-activated with some lame "HP_User" style account with autoupdates turned off, and often a horribly out of date AV POS trialware that was useless before the customer even opened the box. Every customer that leaves my shop has a full working AV and autoupdates turned on and I almost never see them for virus problems, the few that do let their kids run wild or are the "must click on teh buttons!" types and there really isn't anything you can do about PEBKAC.
If the OEMs didn't cripple their machines before they even left the factory I'm sure the number of infected PCs would drop right off the charts. Why in this day and age they are allowed to get away with such intentional crippling of PCs is beyond me. To use a /. car analogy, nobody would expect their brand new car to have the locks tampered with at the factory, would they? So how come the poor user is expected to be an IT guy when sane policies from the factory would get rid of a huge amount of problems?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.