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Wondering if you're really clueless? That means you're clueless.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983
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Clueless users are the real problem in computer safety
May 13, 2006
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2006, Al Fasoldt
From my Syracuse.com Technofile blog of May 9, 2006
I'm convinced that the nut behind the wheel is the main problem with computer safety. While it's true that some viruses get into computers by sneaking in on their own, espcially on Windows PCs that run Internet Explorer (and, yes, I know that's 90 percent of the 600 million Windows PCs on the planet), I also know that many problems are caused not by stealth but by sheer cluelessness.
I step on toes here. I walk on quicksand. I venture too far out into the surf.
You know what I mean. For years, there seems to have been an unwritten rule among knowledgeable computer journalists and savvy security experts: Don't insult the reader. This way of thinking goes like this: People won't pay attention to you if you tell them they are wrong, and they will even refuse to go along with you if you insult them. So the only way to tell clueless people that they are clueless is to tell them that problems exist that are caused by forces we can't control (virus writers and hackers, maybe) and we all have to pull together to get this thing fixed.
Hogwash. Blather. As my cockatoo says to me after I scold her, "Blah blah blah."
Problems do indeed exist. And we can't do much to control people who break the law unless we can catch them. And catching virus writers is hard.
But blaming General Motors (or, maybe, fate) because you wandered out onto the expressway and got hit by a Buick would be nonsense, right? (Lawyers are excused from participating in this paragraph.)
So blaming the system because people are clueless is just so much horse puckey. It's time we blamed the clueless for being clueless.
Read more.
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