Jargon: The Biggest Computer Security Threat
from the wtf-are-you-talking-about? dept
If you’re online these days, computer security problems come in all sorts of flavors including viruses, worms, phishing, trojans, zombies, spyware, malware, adware, DDoS, spam, spim, spit, buffer overflows and many others… and, of course, most people have no clue what most of those mean — which leads them to (a) freaking out about the insecurity of using computers while (b) having no idea how to really protect themselves. While some may question this particular study, it does make a good point that a lot of the jargon used to describe security threats can sometimes be more confusing for non-techie computer users. What this means, though, is that many less savvy users are simply going to expect their ISP to keep them secure, which may be quite a challenge for ISPs who aren’t prepared for that sort of thing.
Comments on “Jargon: The Biggest Computer Security Threat”
jargon
I blame the marketing people! They are the source of all corruption in the English language.
the real problem...
…is that the users DON’T freak out when they get a notification they have one of the above threats on their computer. I’ve personally watched them ignore or click through a hundred or more warnings and popups(either from the internet or the virus scanner) and they don’t even think for a moment that they should call the helpdesk.