Mr. Fund sounds like he's already been bought and paid for by media conglomerates. Net Neutrality doesn't hurt consumers, it hurts predatory billing and marketing practices of media conglomerates. He is just another witless toolbag on their payroll.
Many of you are equally foolish by declaring all of the people that get infected with Fake AV consoles to be idiots. While it's true that many people get infected by going places they shouldn't and/or clicking things that they shouldn't, these "viruses" are frequently propagated by SQL injection and CSS (Cross Site Scripting). Sometimes they aren't installed explicitly at all, and just appear on machines. They are a pervasive problem, and one that many AV programs are not adept at dealing with at all. I have found that BitDefender, Kaspersky, and Sophos are about the most reliable at removing them, but none of them are 100% effective at prevention or removal.
The biggest issue is education. Social engineering is a very big part of the dissemination of spyware, trojans, and viruses. People need to get educated about these types of threats, and learn to be more wary of where they go. Even careful selection of what websites you browse isn't a surefire bet, as many times CSS attacks aren't immediately noticed, and many rather popular (and generally safe) websites become little more than unwilling dissemination points for these types of threats.
I am in charge of the desktop system administrator team at my company, and most of our workers aren't all that knowledgeable when it comes to computers. Many don't have any idea that there are programs out there that masquerade as a helpful program but are really just clever attempts to steal bank and/or credit card information. In my experience, Fake AV consoles are the #1 threat that we face from an AV perspective, encompassing about 90% of our infections. We recently switched from Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.5 (Absolutely worthless, don't ever buy it) to Sophos Endpoint Protection, and our Fake AV infection rates have dropped by nearly 95%. It's that big of a difference. That coupled with education on Social Engineering tactics has helped keep our environments much safer, and resulted in a much better overall experience for users.
It's easy to bag on the idiots, and there are certainly a lot of them, but you have to remember that a lot of the people did nothing wrong or especially risky, other than trusting that their AV software works as advertised. Sadly, most of the popular AV programs are TERRIBLE at eliminating these threats. AVG, MS Security Essentials, Symantec Endpoint Protection, PC Cillin, HouseCall, etc. have all proven rather unreliable against these types of threats in our enterprise and in my experience troubleshooting user machines privately as well.
Ultimately this is very similar to the spread of STDs. The biggest two factors still have by far the largest impact just as they do with the spread of STDs: Education and Prevention. Just my 2 cents.
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This is why we DBAN any laptops we have before we recycle them, and every laptop gets 256 bit AES FDE before it ever touches a user's hands.
Mr. Fund sounds like he's already been bought and paid for by media conglomerates. Net Neutrality doesn't hurt consumers, it hurts predatory billing and marketing practices of media conglomerates. He is just another witless toolbag on their payroll.
Many of you are equally foolish by declaring all of the people that get infected with Fake AV consoles to be idiots. While it's true that many people get infected by going places they shouldn't and/or clicking things that they shouldn't, these "viruses" are frequently propagated by SQL injection and CSS (Cross Site Scripting). Sometimes they aren't installed explicitly at all, and just appear on machines. They are a pervasive problem, and one that many AV programs are not adept at dealing with at all. I have found that BitDefender, Kaspersky, and Sophos are about the most reliable at removing them, but none of them are 100% effective at prevention or removal. The biggest issue is education. Social engineering is a very big part of the dissemination of spyware, trojans, and viruses. People need to get educated about these types of threats, and learn to be more wary of where they go. Even careful selection of what websites you browse isn't a surefire bet, as many times CSS attacks aren't immediately noticed, and many rather popular (and generally safe) websites become little more than unwilling dissemination points for these types of threats. I am in charge of the desktop system administrator team at my company, and most of our workers aren't all that knowledgeable when it comes to computers. Many don't have any idea that there are programs out there that masquerade as a helpful program but are really just clever attempts to steal bank and/or credit card information. In my experience, Fake AV consoles are the #1 threat that we face from an AV perspective, encompassing about 90% of our infections. We recently switched from Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.5 (Absolutely worthless, don't ever buy it) to Sophos Endpoint Protection, and our Fake AV infection rates have dropped by nearly 95%. It's that big of a difference. That coupled with education on Social Engineering tactics has helped keep our environments much safer, and resulted in a much better overall experience for users. It's easy to bag on the idiots, and there are certainly a lot of them, but you have to remember that a lot of the people did nothing wrong or especially risky, other than trusting that their AV software works as advertised. Sadly, most of the popular AV programs are TERRIBLE at eliminating these threats. AVG, MS Security Essentials, Symantec Endpoint Protection, PC Cillin, HouseCall, etc. have all proven rather unreliable against these types of threats in our enterprise and in my experience troubleshooting user machines privately as well. Ultimately this is very similar to the spread of STDs. The biggest two factors still have by far the largest impact just as they do with the spread of STDs: Education and Prevention. Just my 2 cents.