another reason to use adblock and noscript... or just use Linux

[G Rundlett]

Greg Rundlett




On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 1:48 PM, Benjamin Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Greg Rundlett (freephile)
> <greg at freephile.com> wrote:
> > Of course, you can just run Linux and you're system won't be vulnerable
> to
> > most if not all such 'scareware'.
>
>   For now.  Right now, the attackers go after Windows, because 90% of
> the users run Windows.  (With a higher percentage of easily-duped
> users.)
>
>  If Linux or MacOS or AmigaOS had a huge market share, we'd see the
> same attacks on them.
>

So, it seems that you're saying: "Don't switch to Linux because even though
it will prevent you from getting 99% of the malware out there today, someday
it could be targeted and vulnerable".


[snip]


> http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=2A32DD2B-1A64-6A71-CEBCE1F83973D7CA
> ... it boils down to way too much work that regular users won't do ...

 Exactly.

> ...it downplays the advantages of switching to Mac, and it certainly
> doesn't go far enough in that it doesn't even list switching to Linux
> as an option.

  Sure it does: "The same goes for Linux as well: A scam run past
someone using Firefox in Ubuntu is still a scam by any other name."

In theory yes, but in practice no.  Clicking on a gif-ad-malware that
downloads an .exe that works on windows almost assuredly won't do one bit of
harm on my Ubuntu system.

 That's right after the part about MacOS and "Most dangerous of all,
though, is a false sense of security: users can be duped no matter
what they're running."

Again, I have to disagree from a practical point of view.  I recommended
that my wife switch to a Mac, and I'm feeling much better that her computer
won't be affected by malware.  It's got nothing to do with her sense of
vulnerability/security or her level of technical knowledge.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20100324/8c9daf7b/attachment.html