Re: Good news, bad news

T i m <news@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

James Taylor wrote:

Or someone who simply doesn't fancy having their credentials stolen by
spyware the second they visit their webmail, or contracting malware
infections on their USB flash drive.

Not aware of that ever happening there

That's the nature of spyware - you're not supposed to discover it!
Once the rootkit is in place, your anitvirus can't see it either and
it's likely that signature updates will be silently blocked by the
rootkit, so you'll never find out. You'll just run the scan and be told
that the machine is clean. A false sense of security is worse than not
knowing either way.

.. but then I guess if you don't know about Windows you wouldn't also
know you can protect it easily for free?

Pull the other one.

I invariably contract one of four or five different viruses
that seem to be doing the rounds on the Internet Cafe
machines when I need to transfer a file.

You need to go to more professional places James.

Travelling around Southeast Asia doesn't provide such opportunities. I'm
lucky to find a computer purchased in the last 5 years, and there's
never anyone there that understands the computers. Whoever's sitting at
the desk taking the money invariably freaks out when I boot my live
Linux CD to get a clean environment and I have to pacify them before I
can get on with checking my mail.

Or, just keep looking till you actually find a Mac only Internet cafe
in the back of beyond (or even in the high street!).

Actually, I have found a few Mac only places, even out here. However,
they tend to be much more modern and sophisticated establishments;
lending weight to my belief that the tide is turning against Windows
amongst the cognoscenti.

Fortunately, when I put the flash drive back in my Mac,
the various virus files cannot hide themselves in the way
they do on Windows, so I can just delete them.

LOL

Why do you laugh? Does it shame you that the Mac can easily see and
remove the dangerous infections that most PC users just blithely pass on
to each other in total ignorance?

One of the viruses I picked up on my USB flash drive was an MSIE shim;
it embeds itself in the MSIE executable somehow and thus can bypass the
Windows firewall to contact the outside world as if it were MSIE itself.
It can also read all user input entered into the browser before the SSL
encryption layer gets hold of it. Thus this spyware can read any and all
Internet Banking credentials, PayPal, Amazon, or anything else it
desires, and then pass it out through its own SSL connection to the bad
guys via their distributed botnet.

I'm very grateful to have a proper computer that isn't vulnerable. I
think all PC users ought to compensate for their wilfully stupid choice
by keeping at least one Mac nearby just so they can check against these
things occasionally.

It would all go through the gateway which would time their period
of activity automatically (optionally redirecting their browser
to a login page if they're using wi-fi).

You are funny James. Is this the Mac way, fixing what's not broken? Or
are you so used to jumping through so many hoops just to accommodate
the things in the real world? ;-)

I'm not trying to be funny. It's a sensible suggestion. There are plenty
of network access control solutions that work this way. What you're
currently doing is the equivalent of checking football game tickets in
the crowd outside the stadium instead of checking them at the entry gate
itself. Check the tickets at the gate silly! You know it makes sense.

Oh, so at least you're trying not to damage your daughter's mental
development, and you're making an effort to reduce the harmful effect
that Internet connected PCs have on the rest of us.

So your solution is telling everyone to go out a buy a Volvo rather
than just teaching them to drive better?

I'd love to educate all computer users, but I think you know that's not
practical. However, as the operator of an Internet cafe your "mate" can
do his bit to improve the situation and protect his customers. Using
your analogy, if you're a company car procurement guy you wouldn't
choose a fleet of Japanese motorbikes instead of nice safe cars (unless
you wanted to kill off your boss, of course).

Do you have kids James? Try taking MSN messenger / cam off most today
(even if you do give them some clumsy equivalent) and see how long it
lasts.

I see your point, but AdiumX will do MSN on Mac, and then there's iChat
and Skype too. You don't have to abandon IM on a Mac.

p.s. How much Apple merchandising do you own and wear James?

Only my iPod, and that stays discreetly in my pocket. I just wish I
could hide these damn white earbuds!

--
James Taylor
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Good news, bad news
    ... infections on their USB flash drive. ... That's the nature of spyware - you're not supposed to discover it! ... You need to go to more professional places James. ... Actually, I have found a few Mac only places, even out here. ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Re: Good news, bad news
    ... contracting malware infections on their USB flash drive. ... That's the nature of spyware - you're not supposed to discover it! ... You don't need to have a Mac at both ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Re: So much for Windows XP being spyware free...
    ... could purchase a Mac, and I told him. ... plug this spyware hole YEARS ago. ... hardware driver updates unless you go through custom manually. ... It sounds like my experience with ATI. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Mac Spyware?
    ... the best protection because malware is not the only threat. ... I don't know much about Mac virus protection ... If any Mac user tells you that there is no spyware on Macs, ... But spyware can be put on a machine using those security holes. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Macs in Astronomy Updated; Canon 20D under Mac & Windows
    ... > to make it secure? ... >> infections. ... > I gotta tell you that you sound a lot like a typical Windows apologist ... > who talks about the Mac without knowing beans about it. ...
    (sci.astro.amateur)
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