Lying by Omission...

[elfs]

Microsoft has released Own Your Space-- Keep Yourself and Your Stuff Safe Online, a 230-page book "for teens" teaching them how to be safe and secure in their use of on-line materials.

There's a very large section on malware, on how to protect yourself from viruses, trojans, and so forth and so on. What's fascinating about the book is the extent to which Microsoft's writers have eschewed any responsibility for making the host so damn infectious in the first place.

There is no mention of the MacOS or Linux OS at all throughout the book, no mention of their relative invulnerability and from-the-kernel-up security models, no mention of their own incomparably promiscuous and vulnerable operating systems and how those contributed to the general sense of Internet-borne threats to man and machine alike.

Buy a Mac. Run Thunderbird. Install Askimet. And you can skip chapters 1-5 entirely.

Chapters 6-16 are pretty good, though, but they're about the social dangers: cyberbullying, stalking, being too public with some things. On the other hand, chapter 12 is absolutely aghast that you might adopt anything other than a commercial licensing option for your own creative efforts.

Comments

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Invariably you will now get a bunch of people saying something silly like "They aren't hacked because there aren't enough machines running them to make it worthwhile to hackers."

Politely ignoring the fact that most of the machines doing important stuff on the internet (like balance transfers and stuff that actually has money associated with it) is done on various flavors of Linux and also ignoring the ego of hackers who would, in theory, get big ego points for 'being the first' to make the Mac and Linux geeks STFU.

Microsoft is so good at running that spin story it's just sad how often I see it echoed. *sigh*

[chaosss.livejournal.com]

I believe the spin story runs both directions, actually, and the truth is somewhere in between them all but seems to boil down to "know your budget, know your OS, know your vulnerabilities and tradeoffs and work to minimize your risk."

In other words - educate yourself and make choices.

Not so easy in a book for teens, however.

[tagryn]

I think the idea of virus creation as primarily an expression of ego or as a hobby is outdated. These days, virus development is much more about cybercrime and profits via zombie computer networks, spam, identity theft, etc. To paraphrase bank robber Willie Sutton, Microsoft gets all the focus because "that's where the money is."

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Except of course, paypal, ebay, most online poker sites, and the billing systems for just about every MMORG you can think of are all running on Linux. So that's where the money is. It's just not where the EASY money is. That's why Windows is the target. Smaller amounts but easier access.

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

But that has substantially less to do with the operating system than it does with the users - and not their level of technical sophistication per se. eBay/PayPal, Blizzard, etc. all have huge teams of administrators, a large portion of whose job is intrusion monitoring. The average home user doesn't have someone else monitoring their machine for them; so yes, the access is easier, but that has nothing to do with Windows and everything to do with the class of machine and user.

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

But Microsoft has No Responsibility moral or otherwise to recommend other OSen to users. Even on a core level, this isn't lying, it's pragmatism. By far the substantial majority of personal computers out there are running Windows, and most teens won't actually have substantial say in what OS the machine they use/own runs; it's in the best interests to offer them advice for the system they're likely to use.

[(Anonymous)]

It might not be an easy book for teens but "educate yourself and make responsible choices" is something that is a key lesson that needs to be imparted at that age.

[lovingboth]

Oh come on, it's got lots to do with Windows.

Microsoft: the people who thought it would be a good idea for a standard setup PC to be listening on a variety of ports, just waiting to be taken over. What was the time before an out-of-the-box unfirewalled net-connected one running XP was hacked? A couple of minutes?

[lovingboth]

Most harm-reduction programmes in the drugs field say something like 'you'd be safer if you weren't injecting, but if you are then...'

The equivalent here would be to admit that 'you'd be safer if you were running Linux or OS X, but if you are running Windows then...'

[(Anonymous)]

This is obviously an effort for MS to appear responsible while at the same time providing a form of advertising and encouragement for parents to buy MS products. Most people reading this won't know much about computers remember.

It is an unfortunate fact that most users with little knowledge use a fairly weak operating system since it is the most widely available, at least pre-installed. These users are a soft target and criminals are known to look specifically for soft targets. Using Mac OS or Linux would be an improvement indeed, though it wouldn't entirely remove the issue on its own. It is the combination, as I said a weak OS combined with poor knowledge, that makes these people so incredibly vulnerable.

As a disclaimer I've used Windows mostly for a long time now, at least since DOS went out. I've had tuition at college in Linux and I'm experimenting with a Macbook Pro but still primarily use Windows. I've also never had any real virus issues to speak of, keep up to date antivirus and a firewall and you'll be fairly safe so long as you don't do anything stupid. I also like to think I have good security habits in most cases too which goes a long way.