People have been dealing with viruses and malicious programs since the dawn of PCs. (Before that even, really.) This is not news. A virus or trojan horse can do something much worse than the (possible) inconvenience of a "bad guy" getting your credit card number. Whether you're a business or an individual, having, say, your hard drive wiped clean by a virus would be several orders of magnitude worse than the relatively minor inconvenience of having to get unauthorized items deleted from your credit card bill. This is just as possible as the credit card scenario FV is painting, and PC owners have been dealing with this kind of threat for over a decade. Rather than focus on something as tame as credit card numbers, let's look at what else a malicious program could do if it had unlimited power over your PC: o Ransack your tax preparation files o Compress and transmit your financial information to your competitors or to Blacknet. o Capture the passwords and logins that you use while telecommuting o Use your dial-up bank-by-computer software to make unauthorized transfers. o Reformat your hard drive. The fact is, malicious programs are a threat that has been in the background for over a decade, and PC users with any experience to speak of are familiar with at least the rudiments of dealing with this class of problem. If anything, they're more familiar with this kind of threat than more network-specific threats. (Look at the huge sales of popular anti-virus products.) Sure, there are clueless people out there, but the solution is to help make them less clueless, not to stampede them in a panic, which is apparently FV's goal here. --doug Ernest Hua writes:

I'm quite amazed at the level of ... well ... how can I characterize it without insulting too many people? ... arrogance? ...

Many of you would be amazed at what motivates the average person to buy or to use a computer. Most people, when asked about security, do not even have a concept, let alone how it applies in a computer environment.

There is far more misinformation and miseducation among the average user than you might think. Not everyone understands why they need a modem in order to get onto the Internet. Not everyone understands why you need to sign up for an account with an ISV in order to get onto the Internet. (You would be amazed at how many people think that just buying a modem is good enough to get onto the Internet.)

The response is typically, "I don't understand all that technobabble!" "Just give me something that works!" "This is too complicated!"

If you think that the dumb user should be left to fight for his/her own survival on the information highway, you are easily condemning 75% to 90% of the current users.

I am not entirely convinced that Borenstein is totally selfless in his (or FV's) announcement. However, the basis of his argument, while it may not apply to the cypherpunk community, has much merit in the real world.

Try helping 100 random people with computers. Bet you 90 of them have trouble getting onto the Internet, period, let alone figuring how to run Netscape. There is a reason why AOL/CompuServe do very well caterring to those who are technically-challenged.

Ern

------ ------ Douglas Barnes "The tighter you close your fist, Governor Tarkin, cman@communities.com the more systems will slip through your fingers." cman@best.com --Princess Leia