Yes, education is a good thing, but making it harder to use the program is not a solution.
I'd like to put forth a little example here. My mother infected her work computer by opening the virus. She's not a stupid person and (naturally) she didn't want to infect her PC. The solution you're suggesting here makes it impossible for her to open attachments, or at least very difficult. More inportantly, it doesn't solve the problem. Even if she does learn to work around the "solution" you're providing, she won't know whether a file has a virus in it and so to not open it. And honestly, neither will I. Every time any of us runs a program we get from someone else we're making a judgement call. Yes, we need to learn to make our decisions more intelligently, but making the whole process more difficult is not the solution.
Let's dispell the notion that the average user is so stupid that we have to make something that should be simple in to something really hard to punish them for potentially making mistakes they can't understand.
What we really need is something like what was suggested earlier on this thread. Any time an attachment tries to modify a file or invoke a macro or some function of Outlook, etc. , you should be prompted. For example, if my mother had been prompted to send e-mail to everyone on her list, I'm sure she would have declined. Give the user control of the program. Un-automate those things that should be un-automated and leave working good stuff alone.
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Yes, education is a good thing, but making it harder to use the program is not a solution.
I'd like to put forth a little example here. My mother infected her work computer by opening
the virus. She's not a stupid person and (naturally) she didn't want to infect her PC. The
solution you're suggesting here makes it impossible for her to open attachments, or at
least very difficult. More inportantly, it doesn't solve the problem. Even if she does learn to work
around the "solution" you're providing, she won't know whether a file has a virus in it and
so to not open it. And honestly, neither will I. Every time any of us runs a program we
get from someone else we're making a judgement call. Yes, we need to learn to make our
decisions more intelligently, but making the whole process more difficult is not the solution.
Let's dispell the notion that the average user is so stupid that we have to make
something that should be simple in to something really hard to punish them for
potentially making mistakes they can't understand.
What we really need is something like what was suggested earlier on this thread. Any time
an attachment tries to modify a file or invoke a macro or some function of Outlook, etc. , you
should be prompted. For example, if my mother had been prompted to send e-mail to everyone
on her list, I'm sure she would have declined. Give the user control of the program. Un-automate
those things that should be un-automated and leave working good stuff alone.
Another online article. This one by some Mac folk. http://lowendmac.net/musings/kerberos.html