- By Dan Veaner
- Opinions
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I am a long time computer user, and am pretty knowledgeable about being careful, yet my system was successfully attacked some months ago. I don't reply to spam (that only confirms your address is good), I don't click on unknown attachments (that is how viruses and trojans infect your computer), I use protective software, and use SiteAdvisor in my Web browser to give me a heads-up on sites not to click on. In other words I do a LOT of stuff to protect my computer and it doesn't always work.
When I got my first PC most PC users were computer geeks who wanted to tweak as much as possible by hand. It was fun to learn to make the machine do useful things by writing batch files or sending obscure command line commands. But computers didn't become widely popular until Windows and Macs made them easy to use. Like a toaster. Not too complicated: press a button, get something done.
So it is unreasonable to expect the average user to do what it takes to stand up to all these attacks. And the programs that do scan and screen e-mail, Web sites and so on are so Draconian that they diminish the computing experience by forbidding innocent mail and Web sites.
And slowing everything down. Why did I spend the money to get a fast computer when all this junk makes it slow? And while I appreciate my Web host's new mail screening, it now takes between a half hour and a day to get mail sent to me, instead of the almost instant mail I used to get. When it was instant it was almost as immediate as an IM (Instant Message) -- and that could be fun from time to time. Now it's just slow, and has caused snags in my day on more than one occasion as people wonder why I am not replying to mail I haven't yet received.
Who are the people that do this to all of us? Writing a virus or trojan isn't that hard. A child could do it. In fact many of the people who do this are children. The open nature of the Internet is both is greatest strength and weakness. The strength is that we can share resources, information, and all kinds of things that impact our businesses and our lives, freely and quickly. The weakness is that any jerk can bring it to a standstill.
It's a catch-22. It works great except that it doesn't because the nasties bring it down. It's time for the government to put in place a comprehensive reporting system, and to demonstrate some success in finding and prosecuting people who distribute harmful programs. It should be the government, because they can set a standard, make it free to use, and use their power to prosecute to make the system worthwhile.
It shouldn't be hard for people to find or understand. It should be a matter of pressing a button and making something happen. These are computers, after all -- it ought to be possible to use them to make it possible to use them.
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