On 18 May 2001, at 23:02, Roger B.A. Klorese wrote:
> On Fri, 18 May 2001, Tim Pierce wrote:
> > We spent years trying to educate people not to believe "virus
> > warnings" that they got in e-mail anyway, since 99% of the time
> > they're the Budweiser Frogs hoax. Warnings about a *real* virus
> > will come to them through other channels.
>
> That used to be true.
>
> But ISPs actually don't tell their users anything about it. Most home
> users find out about them from those warnings.
Yeah, but there's a problem with this whole approach: the 'warnings' are
the wrong things to be passing around. It is one thing to get a
'warning' that a new exploit in sendmail 8.3 has been discovered and you
need to get the patch de-pronto. It is another thing to be told for the
thousandth time "DONT OPEN ATTACHMENTS". How many times do ISPs and
folk in general have to tell these clowns the *same*message*, over and
over and over and over... 'DONT OPEN ATTACHMENTS', neither the picture of
Anna K nor the mysterious greeting card nor the direct-link to 'Hot teen
sex' nor ANY of that is safe.
Note that since there are *always* one trojan or another roaming about,
ISPs could, I guess, just keep emailing their customers their daily
warning: 'Yes, there are still email trojans afoot, don't open
attachments'... Would you really do business for more than two days with
an ISP that sent you a warning like that EVERY day? But nothing short of
that really fits, does it: the trojans are *constantly* about, there is
always one or another. And, as an ISP, what do you do when you try
warning your customers about "Anna" or "melissa" and you don't warn them
about some other one [since you can't because there are thousands
floating about] and your trusting customer gets nailed by it?
The thing that bothers me with these dumb 'warnings' is the implication
that *other* attachments are OK to open. -- that the picture of Anna K is
a trojan, don't open it, but maybe the picture of Monica Seles would make
for good viewing so give it a try. DUH!!!! I try and try to convince
folk that the only rational way to stay afloat is by *inclusion* rather
than *exclusion* [that is, you assume that everythign is bad/dangerous
and only "include" _specific_ things that you know or are confident are
safe [and even then you gotta be careful]; the "dont open..." warnings
are from folk whose world-model is apparently just the opposite: it is OK
to mess around with attachments, except you have to be careful to
"exclude" just these speicific dangerous ones]...
Yes, I'm still having trouble adjusting to the basic level-of-dumb of the
apparently-average user these days. The thing is that I want *BETTER*
clients for me, but I it seems obvious to me that that's the wrong thing
to be doing: what the net needs is *dumber* clients. Clients that have
operating environments more like a toaster or a pencil than like a
LearJet.
I dunno.. maybe I'm getting too old, crotchety and intolerant to be
messing with this sort of stuff.
/bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep <--
