Too much scaremongering online
We all know that there are some nasty people out there as well as some seriously stupid people, but in a week when the Google Street Car was turned away from a village, are we getting taken for a ride by lazy online media outlets, newspapers and anti-virus developers.
My colleague Dan gets an email almost every day from a President’s wife or a multi-millionaire offering to put their money into his account for safe keeping. All he has to do is send his bank details and he will get 10% of the booty. We’ve all heard about it and been sent one, but this type of fraudulant behaviour has been going on since man learnt to write.
Online Criminals Everywhere!
All you need to do is click on the Daily Mail or any other news media site and there is a new story scaring the hell out of us (or more likely our parents) on why they should be ultra careful when they are online. So much so the other day it was reported that Google Street View was Blocked from a Village becuase they were scared that burglars would plan their raids via Google. Well if burglars really wanted to rob them, surely they would simply stakeout the house in the good old fashioned way.
In the Telegraph today there is a piece about Silver Surfers having to be aware on Twitter and Facebook and getting their identity stolen. – Every day there is something new. And yes it is scary
Trojan Horse from Twitter – Virus on your Facebook
So much so my Dad refuses to use Facebook. He is so worried about getting a Trojan Horse, Worm or Virus of some sort that he is always after the latest Anti-Virus software. And with this torrent of bad-news and online scaremongering who can blame him?
Scaremongering Helps the Anti Virus Developers
I saw this article claiming “40% of teens have hacked into online accounts” – apart from the fact that it was not substantiated by any numbers, stats or clear facts, this article was supported by 4 (FOUR) adverts for an Anti-Virus package. This bad news surely doesn’t harm the devolopers – infact in this instance has made the perfect environment for the adverts. Nor does it harm the news media, they love a nice piece of scaremongering – which they have enjoyed writing about long before computers were invented.
Some Free Anti-Virus Packages can be bad for you
I have had machines that have been affected by viruses, but i have had more PCs that have succumbed to my fear of Viruses and have slowed to a grinding halt due to the free packages i have downloaded. So perhaps we should be more carefree and then we would enjoy our computers and the internet that much more if we didn’t worry so much?
For best peace of mind however, buy the software, then be carefree.
Tags: anti-virus
Couldn’t agree more – there’s a whole industry based on selling protection against this kind of thing. Even the telegraph article you link to concludes with a recommendation to purchase your credit report regularly. As you point out, scaremongering is often in the interest of the media – just think of computing publications / blogs etc. which make half their money from selling ad space to anti-virus software makers.
You make a point about computers slowing down when anti-virus software is installed, although I can’t help thinking that most such problems occur when people install mutliple anti-virus packages in the hope of being better protected.
I certainly don’t find any noticable slowness on my machine while running AVG. In think unless you have a stone-age PC, you shouldn’t have too much difficulty running an anti-virus package, especially with modern dual-core processors.
maybe we wouldn’t have these problems if institutions such as banks were more thorough in verifying identity
Those ppl in that village are stupid. What did they think was going to happen? Burglars don’t have computers – they nick them, but they hardly get broadband as you can’t steal that.
@JJP2D – lol maybe they steal their neighbours wi-fi?
Scaremongering is so common these days… it happens everywhere. The British Health Authority is particularly bad at this, their ad campaigns are scare-mongering of the highest degree!