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Studies

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Oct 4th 2004 2:12am





US Computer Users Not So Concerned With Security

from the interesting-metric... dept

I'm not quite sure how they came up with this benchmark, but a US security group is upset that more people know about when Janet Jackson had her wardrobe malfunction than when they last updated their anti-virus software. Still, other parts of the survey do suggest that Americans aren't taking computer security threats all that seriously, believing they have a great chance of being hit by lightening, being audited by the tax man or winning the lottery -- than getting hit by a computer security problem. The study also claims that 91% of PCs were infected with spyware, which seems very high and makes you wonder what they consider to be classified as spyware.

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  1.  

    No Subject Given

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    Phoopharker, Oct 4th, 2004 @ 7:54am

    Heh - based on my own personal experience of finding tens, if not hundreds, of individual 'hits' when running Ad-Aware/Spybot/whatever on random PCs, I'm not in the least suprised by the 91% figure. Even if it's really closer to 80% (still not suprising), it just serves as evidence that Joe Sixpack can't be expected to have enough technical accumen to manage his own machine, despite the commoditization of the computer, an (obviously) complex combination of technologies that can befuddle those of us who work with them daily.

    Two words, folks: Job Security.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Re: No Subject Given

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Oct 5th, 2004 @ 11:18am

    Usually, most items the spyware remover tools seem to find are tracking cookies. I bet everyone that's been online has at least a couple of those lying around. Hence, the scary 91% number.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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