[X4U] Good Reading

[Paul Silver]

On 7/18/05, Richard Gilmore wrote:
> Our PCs at work are loaded from a frozen disc image everyday. They have to
> be left on 24 hours a day and every night at 1 am the hard drives are
> automatically erased. The lengths they go to, to keep the malware at bay are
> extraordinary.

That's quite an excessive length to go to, I think.

When I first got a Mac, I did spend several months being mildly smug
about not having to worry about viruses any more. However, I've kept
my mum's PC virus/ad-ware free by swapping her over to Firefox, having
a software firewall turned on, and installing a free anti-virus
package. I do feel sorry for people who don't have a techie they can
call on to set their computer up as Windows does seem very vulnerable
out of the box, although apparently XP with service pack 2 installed
is a bit better.

Where I used to work the Windows IT chap had to spend a while
installing fixes for the latest spyware when we'd get an outbreak, but
it was relatively rare. We had a general problem where some of the
sales staff would 'work late' and then come in the next day to find a
porn site had welded itself in as their home page, but very rarely did
anything need wiping and re-loading.


Paul