Considering the ways that most malicious spammers brutally take over computers you're damned right it's MS's responsibility. How about preventing a site from changing your Start Page without asking you? Or how about preventing the automatic installation of spyware dog crap like Gator, TinyBar, IntelligentExplorer, etc? These things should not be able to install themselves without you knowing it, yet they are. That is a flaw in Windows. A secure operating system would not allow outside entities to manipulate it. I'd be willing to bet that 75% of the users who visit this site are infected by one form of spyware or more. I say infect because they are just as malicious as a virus but you don't notice them. MS must step up to the plate and abolish this trash. The only real cure though would be to prosecute the "entrepreneurs" who distribute spyware.

the problem is however there's not much alternative. MS needs to move towards Linux/Unix type security system (i.e only super user has permission to change things). Unfortunately, if everyone switches to MACS, Linux so will the spammers/virus writers. Instead of wasting billions and billions on software...why not punish the ones who make these things. Make the consequences outweigh the reward. Chances are these viruses are probably written by the anti-virus company's in the first place so you'll consume more...Djarums is right about prosecuting the "entrepreneurs".

Originally posted by Djarums
How about preventing a site from changing your Start Page without asking you? Or how about preventing the automatic installation of spyware dog crap like Gator, TinyBar, IntelligentExplorer, etc? These things should not be able to install themselves without you knowing it, yet they are. That is a flaw in Windows. A secure operating system would not allow outside entities to manipulate it. I'd be willing to bet that 75% of the users who visit this site are infected by one form of spyware or more.

I totally agree with you, anything installed on your pc should be ok'd by the user. I ran a spyware detector the other day and couldn't believe how many app's were running that I didn't know about. And you're probably being generous by saying 75%, I wouldn't doubt if it was higher.

From reading the quotes of Bill Gates, I think he is referring not just to himself/Microsoft but also all software design houses.

Despite Microsoft having tremendous power in the computing industry, blame should not fall solely on them!

What Gates was getting at is engineering anti-spam/anti-virus functions into individual programs. It is expected that every user should HAVE TO purchase firewall and anti-virus software for their PC, but for some people they are either new to this form of technology or perhaps simply can't afford to.

By having programs that manage this type of security themselves, it is very likely the amount of virus-related issues would greatly decrease.

At least Microsoft is trying to reduce such issues with macro virus protection built into their Office software, malicious script detection functionality built into their e-mail and Internet programs, as well as firewall and basic anti-virus operations in their O.S.

[Edited on 1-9-2003 by SimonGray]

Originally posted by SimonGray
What Gates was getting at is engineering anti-spam/anti-virus functions into individual programs. It is expected that every user should HAVE TO purchase firewall and anti-virus software for their PC, but for some people they are either new to this form of technology or perhaps simply can't afford to.

I did purchase a good firewall a while back, but is that supposed to prevent spyware from attatching itself to your computer without you knowing when downloading other applications? I was quite shocked when I ran a spyware detector. It detected over 100 spyware files and/or cookies, then I clicked "remove" and it took me to a site to enter my credit card number.

I must say that one company surprised the hell out of me with their latest release, and that is AOL 9.0

I've done beta testing for AOL for about 7 years now so I've seen their clients in the best of stages and the worst of stages, and all in all this version really impressed me. Yes, it is still bloated (60MB installation file), and yes it's still loaded up with thousands of features no one needs, and yes it still hogs a lot of RAM, but they finally got some security. All email attachments sent and received with AOL 9.0 now get scanned by McAfee on the server side to prevent spreading of a virus. Also AOL finally includes adaptive spam filters. These filters learn on the fly what you consider spam. I've had the spam filter enabled on mine for probably somewhere in the area of 6 months and I have gone from having 0% of spam caught to about 50% of spam caught. Not bad for a new product. AOL is far from perfect but I'm glad to see one company putting in effort to stop this garbage from happening. They also have a link to either ad-aware or spybot to help unclog people's PCs.

Not bad AOL... let's see who else starts stepping up to the plate.

SPAM

[Edited on 3-9-2003 by William]