Americans still unaware!

General Topics
1

Hi forum folks,

According to a study by Opera a lot of Americans are unaware of the relation between browser and security. See the study results: http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking/Americans-unaware-of-browsersecurity-link/2005/05/31/1117305568501.html Why is this still so a couple of months later, that is a long time on the Internet?

polonus

2

I doubt that this is confined to America, I think if they asked those same questions anywhere in the world you would get a similar response.

Heck you can see that in these forums, a lot of people are still using IE that might not have the latest security updates, their OS is not fully up to date. Now that is directly related to security and not just related to which browser might make them more secure.

For some the reason they are on the forums is because they have a problem and a lot of those the problem highlights out of date OS and/or browser. Now if they neglect security updates, they are hardly likely to even consider which browser is more secure.

3

You are right!

Couple a weeks ago one of my friends came to me for help. I said what’s the problem?
Apparently he had troubles with sending mail, so I asked him to tell me exactly what he did?

He said: “I wrote the mail, put the address, try to send, but it doesn’t go out”.
I checked the settings which were fine, but address was something like this

<******ATYahoo.com> :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: AT!!!

Don’t get me start about the browser issue :smiley:

He owns that PC for 6 years now (and had always much better configuration than me).

So again David you are right

4

Hi Zagor,

But it can be so much safer, just have knoppix on a USB stick, you then know for sure you are booting to a safe environment, read E-mail via IMAP-SSL and send E-mail via SMTP+SSL, and browsing podcasted Flock, without leaving any trace. And when you have the USB stick, what does this cost you: 0 yes that is zero Euro.

polonus

5

Most people I know with PCs at home haven’t got a clue about online security. They don’t even know what a firewall is or does. I don’t get into conversations about it with them. Their PCs get hijacked or hacked. They take them down to a local shop. There they spend a lot of money so some tech formats the harddrive. Then they have to figure out how to get all their software back on their machine. Like I said. I don’t get into conversations with them about it.