Connect an unprotected Windows XP box to the Internet, and it will be under the control of script-kiddie crackers in four minutes.
While its no surprise that this is happening, I have to say the speed at which it’s happening is pretty scary. The worst part is you can’t even connect to windows update to patch your computer before it’s been taken over. I’ve been dealing with this problem quite a bit lately because Jenny’s mom has been having problems with her computer running extremelly slowly. Simple programs like Firefox take two to three minutes just to load, and once she does connect to the Internet, the viruses and spam programs that have hijacked her computer kick in and start taking over all her available bandwidth, so Web pages load slowly, if at all.
There are millions of people like her out there I’m sure who think that they need a new computer because it’s running so slowly, when in fact, it’s all the malware/viruses/crapola jockying for system resources that’s making the system run so slowly. So those people either reformat their entire system – FUN for the whole family! – and get reinfected the next time they connect to the Internet (Lather. Rinse. Repeat) or they go to Best Buy and drop another $500 – $2000 for a Windows based computer that will also get reinfected, but because it’s a newer faster computer, will be able to process the spam/viruses/junk even faster.
On one hand, a waste of time, on the other, a waste of money.
It’s a vicious circle unique the Windows operating system. One solution to the problem is to install some sort of firewall (personally, I always think putting your desktops behind a stand alone firewall/router is the best idea), but the average computer user has trouble doing that due to the complexity of available firewalls (for the most part), it costs money, and they woner why doesn’t their Windows PC protect them to begin with?
Microsoft felt the need to jam every other piece of software out their down the throats of consumers, why can’t it be as pro-active and anti-competative when it comes to actually protecting it’s customers?
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and sons Carter and Colton.
Or at least educating its users about how to keep their system resources from being used up by malware.