I remember a Christian once saying to me that the best day's work that the Devil ever did, was to convince everyone that he didn't exist.
A similar analogy, is that the socialists have convinced everyone that George Orwell's book '1984' was about fascism, when actually it's about the dangers of unrestricted socialism (IngSoc, stands for Engligh Socialism).
These thoughts were piqued when I read a newspaper article in the UK's DailyMail newspaper, outlining the experience the reporter had when they accidentally clicked on a spammer's email.
The chaos that ensued, highlighted the dangers of clicking on these sorts of emails, and the article well worth a skim:
Courtesy of the UK's DailyMail newspaper:
I always like to read articles like this because they show the computer experiences of your average Windows user; and I mean
the really average Windows user.
The average Windows user makes up the majority of Microsoft customer base, and this article perfectly illustrates the clever trick that Microsoft has played upon them.
The article in question is basically about someone who received an email that asked for all sorts of personal information. This email was a spam email, but the user dumbly accepted it as legitimate, and duly got conned - malware was installed and all sorts of chaos ensued.
Now you can comment on the ineptness of the user, but this article isn't about their stupidity, it's about the person that they ultimately blamed.
It's a big, long article that goes into great detail about what happened to them, but nowhere
and I mean nowhere in the article is the word 'Windows' or the word 'Microsoft' mentioned. Not once.
Ultimately the person who they blamed was - Yahoo. They blamed the email service for failing to filter out the email.
Not themselves for being so inept, not Microsoft for selling them an OS with security holes, but Yahoo. Poor Yahoo.
From the article:
Finally on Monday, three days later, smooth-sounding Jessica from 'the Yahoo concierge service' called to help me get back into my account and reassure me that Yahoo took such violations very seriously.
She would not be drawn on who might be responsible at Yahoo for stopping hackers. I wanted to know why Yahoo's own filter system hadn't spotted a bogus email sent in their name and taken it out before I opened it.
And here lies the biggest trick that Microsoft has made - they've made themselves invisible.
They've subtly altered people's perception of computing so that they are blameless.
They've convinced the average Windows user that security holes are a way of life, and it's not their fault, but it's the fault of:
- You for not constantly being on your guard to make up for the fact that an email link can allow remote software to be installed.
- The 'bad guys' who send out these emails and take advantage of the security holes in Microsoft software
- The email provider for not filtering out the 'bad guy's' emails.
All this is very depressing, but even more depressing are the 30 or so comments to this article from more 'average Windows users'.
They all comment on the dangers of email, how they had spam before, and how they ultimately accept it as a way of computing life.
To add insult to injury, a drone from Sophos gives 3 golden rules for online safety - not one of them states to give up Microsoft software and choose Linux or Apple.
I'm fully aware that phishing emails are a malware-vehicle that could be used on these platforms as well, but the security hole that this email exploited was for Windows - as most, if not all of them are.
