Report: Tech misconceptions plague the IT world

New research shows that while many Brits will snap shut a laptop camera in the name of privacy, a worrying amount will just as happily shovel all manner of personal information into an online game in order to get a result they can share with their friends. The survey of 10,000 consumers worldwide, including 1,000 in the UK, …

[Anonymous Coward]

At the same time people still compulsively install "antivirus" software which has been proven many times to be vaporware.

People also believe that Microsoft's Defender is an antivirus / anti-malware when it isn't. It is purely an anti-piracy tool to protect Microsoft and their partners. Which is why it was renamed from Windows Defender to Microsoft Defender. It defends Microsoft; not you!

The *only* thing keeping your computer safe is simply by not running things as administrator / root. This has always been the case, even on Windows since Windows NT/2000. If you can't modify system files, then neither can a virus running under the same privileges. Easy!

[OhForF']

An attacker that has acces to my non admin user account has already access to 99% of the data on my PC i care about. There is no need for an attacker to completely control my machine to violate my privacy.

[Sp1z]

Your post gave me a good giggle (AT you, not WITH you).

Cheers!

[7teven 4ect]

Hey I wrote Task Manager!

On youtube, the fascinating Enderman is currently dropping vids on an ex MS employee who holds scam software holdings and also has the high score in Tempest.

[WolfFan]

Err... if you can access the system using a standard user account, you can access almost everything important on the system. You really need something to keep naughty people at arm's length. Defender will help. It's not perfect by any means, but it's way better than nothing.

Running as a standard user causes problems for most users. Running as a standard user merely slows down attackers who know what they're doing.

Certain software (stuff from Intuit, most especially) won't run correctly (or at all) unless you have full admin privileges.

If you really want to be secure, disconnect from the internet entirely.

[karlkarl]

> Err... if you can access the system using a standard user account, you can access almost everything important on the system

No you can't.

If I have two users on a system, they certainly can't access each others files. File/directory permissions have existed since the 70s

[John Brown (no body)]

But it's still potentially disastrous for the person who's account they DO have access to. And as was posted upthread, a good hacker will likely be able to escalate privileges anyway and get the rest in short order.

[John Brown (no body)]

If you really want to be secure, disconnect from the internet entirely.

...encase the computer in a concrete block and dump into the deepest part of the ocean. And DON'T make backups. Oops, too late. It's all on OneDrive, Google Cloud or iCloud already.

[Ali Dodd]

people will believe any old rubbish

and I'm not just talking about the trolls here spouting cr*p.

"Twenty-five percent stuck their smartphone in a special cover so hackers couldn't steal their data" Really? Might as well not step on the cracks in the pavements as otherwise they will swallow you up.

Serious lack of critical thinking around right now, not to mention the anti-science idiots. What doesn't help that we have in our purview to stop is bad naming and explanations of our stuff, like incognito

[amajadedcynicaloldfart]

Re: people will believe any old rubbish

@Ali Dodd.

Your comment made me smile and (unforgivably) made know I am old.

Where I lived it was "tread on a crack and marry a brick!" Sorry, I don't know why, we just went along with it...

And don't get me started about not treading on dumbstones

[An_Old_Dog]

Lack of Naming Sense [Was: Re: people will believe any old rubbish]

What doesn't help [is] that [what] we have in our purview to stop is bad naming and explanations of our stuff, like incognito [mode] and yet we fail to do so.

Some (perhaps many?) tech-types have terrible (or lack all) naming sense. You see this in badly-chosen, non-descriptive, or misleading variable names, e.g. a FORTRAN sum-up-the-squares program with:

K = K + (I * I)

Why 'K'?! Why not 'SUM', and the appropriate declaration INTEGER SUM? (By default, in FORTRAN66 and FORTRAN77, variables and functions starting with the letters I, J, K, ... N are presumed by the compiler to be integers, and all others floating-point (type REAL), but this default, and/or the type for specific variables and functions, can be changed by an explicit declaration. As a matter of good programming style [and to help linters work more-effectively], all variable and functions ought have their types explicitly declared.)

In hardware, you see bullshit such as [STOP. I am not going down the politically-correct-naming rabbit hole!] "master/slave" designations for IDE/ATA devices, where those terms in no way reflect the true relationship between those devices.

It doesn't help that marketers invent cool-soundng, yet wildly-inaccurate terms such as AutoPilot™ and Full Self-Driving™.

[Bebu]

Re: Lack of Naming Sense [Was: people will believe any old rubbish]

There was a reason why all student fortran assignments had to have

IMPLICIT NONE

Fifty years later I can still recall Hollerith constants and printer control character in the first column ... that's real brain damage. ;)

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Lack of Naming Sense [Was: people will believe any old rubbish]

It doesn't help that marketers invent cool-soundng, yet wildly-inaccurate terms such as AutoPilot™ and Full Self-Driving™.

I find it primarily an American thing to have "cool sounding" names for things and, where possible, do it even for things which already have names. Even in technical fields, it 's almost as if people are frightens of sounding too clever or intelligent.

"Lets fire it up" - switch/turn it on

"lets crack this bad boy open". - "open the case"

"birdseed" - the small, mostly passive components on a PCB

"nuke it" - put it in the microwave oven.

My wife's been hooked on some program about gold mining lately, and god, it's hard to watch. They sound like a bunch of cowboys, using slang names for everything in safety critical situations where clarity is vital. It's scary! And considering the US penchant for abbreviations and acronyms, it's cute how often the cool, slang names for things are longer and less descriptive than the proper names :-)

I get the feeling Americans are far more influenced by Hollywood movies than they like to admit and so many want to sound like the "real men" of the backwoods who can hunt their food and live off the land while driving the shiny SUVs to the grocery store :-)

[J.G.Harston]

put it in the microwave oven

ping shimasu.

[ElNumbre]

Flawed Logic

Putting a cover over your webcam is probably of limited benefit - if they can capture your video feed without you noticing, then they'll be logging all of your passwords, visited sites, contacts, financial records and so on. So even if they don't capture you polishing your pickle, they'll know you have been (and perhaps even grabbed any audio).

Also, I always assume that anyone who has put a cover over their work laptop is using said work laptop for non-work purposes. So firstly, eww, and secondly, there is a fair chance that IT will be logging your evening entertainment preferences, so maybe buy a cheap tablet instead for that sort of activity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Flawed Logic

At least, at least use a bootable USB with a disposable operating system. Knoppix or the like.

And wipe thoroughly!

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: Flawed Logic

Coworker: "Hey, Dog, why do you always bring your own keyboard and mouse whenever you use someone else's computer?"

An_Old_Dog: "I once saw something I can never un-see. Please do not enquire further."

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Flawed Logic

"At least, at least use a bootable USB with a disposable operating system. Knoppix or the like."

The people we are talking about have no clue that is even possible, let alone what Knoppix might be.

(Knoppix? Ooh err missus, sounds a bit rude!)

[Helcat]

Re: Flawed Logic

I'd hate to work for you if you're so willing to invade a person's privacy, only to assume they're doing something wrong because they took precautions against you spying on them.

Oh, I agree that putting the cover over the camera isn't all that secure and people using computers should be put through training on how to keep their computer secure, but I'd rather people used that lens cover on their laptop than subject us to images of their partner wandering past their home office in a towel having just come out of the shower. Or the kids playing in the background. Or their dog being sick on the sofa (poor thing). Oh, and all that happened while in teams meetings where the organiser asked everyone to put their cameras on...

So it's not just about those who would ignore privacy laws to remote view workers without their knowledge: It also helps protect the rest of us from sights that'd require mind bleach to forget about.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Flawed Logic

Don't forget the school board in the US that issued laptops to students, then spied on them via the cameras at home.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/610k-settlement-in-school-webcam-spy-case/

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Flawed Logic

How about a simpler explanation? I never 'need' a webcam on my laptop which I consider a tool and not a toy. I the consumer did not 'want' a webcam but it is hard to find a consumer laptop without a webcam. A cover? The webcam and internal microphone have been disabled at the BIOS. If you are in "infosec" you should have access to these options and you also should have the know-how to make these changes. If I have need for a "webcam" I will purchase a USB connected webcam and put it in the closet / room / basement / bunker I need to physically monitor isn't on fire. The built in laptop webcam with it's additional cost / benefit is for the "need to see people" wonks. I fix things I don't coddle people.

[DS999]

Re: Flawed Logic

Not every BIOS has the option to disable it, and if you're sufficiently paranoid you wouldn't believe that's sufficient. How do you know the OS can't override that setting? If the OS is able to update the BIOS (and we know it can do so) then it likely has the power to override BIOS settings, which malware would take advantage of.

Ideally rather than a cover they'd have a switch that electrically disconnects the webcam. Even more ideally, when the switch is 'on' there would be a little amber light to indicate the camera is powered on. When the camera is actively being used, the amber light would change to green.

[WolfFan]

Re: Flawed Logic

Hmm. I disable the webcam and microphone through firmware (BIOS/UEFI) or utility software (this Lenovo laptop has software that allegedly kills the camera/mic.) If doing it in software seems problematic, I kill it in hardware by physically disconnecting things. Either way, I plug an external webcam/mic into USB when I want/need a camera/mic and unplug it when it is not in use. It's really hard to access a camera that has been disconnected.

And if some admin really doesn't like my taking steps to block his snooping, he gets his laptop back, and I use _my_ hardware... or I just find a new job. Or _he_ finds a new job. Hint: I haven't had to find a new job in quite some time.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Flawed Logic

Most users in a corporate environment a) don't know that is possible, b) Don't have access to the BIOS screen due to corporate policy/password settings and c) unlikely to have the skills to open it up and physically disconnect it without breaking something such as the display panel. The camera is almost always just a USB device, but where it's located and how it's attached from the top of the screen down to the motherboard varies from taking the bottom off and unplugging the camera cable it to fully dissembling the screen to disconnect the camera at that end (Yes, sometimes the "camera lead" is part of the display panel lead, you can't just unplug it at the mother board end)

It's far, far simpler to just tape or paint over the camera.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Flawed Logic

I'm a prudent pickle polisher, so no audio to be captured.

[Wellyboot]

How many?

>>Twenty-two percent believe iOS-based products are immune to all attempts to hack them.<<< in a global survey

Statcounter has global iOS share at 27.74% (Jul '24) Can we therefore conclude that 4/5 of iOS users are muppets?

The tinfoil lined one...

[chivo243]

Re: How many?

wouldn't it be 22% of the market share, 28%?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: How many?

No, it was 22% of respondents, and by market share only 28% of respondents are iUsers so it could still all be iUsers who think that :-)

Of course, some of the 22% may not be iUsers but have heard of the reputed magic in Idevices. And some will be those people who have generisized all smartphones and tablets into "iPhones" and "iPads"

[Doctor Syntax]

"According to Kaspersky, 21 percent of Brits believe a magnet can erase a smartphone."

Magnets erased floppy disks. That became well known. Floppy disks were where data was stored so that translated into "magnets erase data". That was a very important piece of advice. How many users need to track all the developments of storage or have the inclination to do so?

At the time that it mattered that generalisation came to be so strongly recognised that it persisted through the age when it might have been true into an age when it wasn't. It's better that that happened than that it didn't.

[John Brown (no body)]

"At the time that it mattered that generalisation came to be so strongly recognised that it persisted through the age when it might have been true into an age when it wasn't. It's better that that happened than that it didn't."

It'd be interesting to see the age breakdown of those who believe that. Most 18 year olds have never seen a floppy disk. If it's more at the upper, 40 year old end of the scale, then fair enough, they learned that and it stuck. If it's more evenly distributed, or even just a significant portion of younger users, than maybe "magnets bad for data" has passed into computing "lore" and is being parroted down the generations :-)

[ADJB]

"According to Kaspersky, 21 percent of Brits believe a magnet can erase a smartphone. (This might be true if you used that magnet to smash the device into millions of tiny pieces.) That sound you can hear is a thousand IT professionals slapping their faces with the palms of their hands."

This is the fault of the IT industry.

We had, and still have, a lot of HDD's out there which users have always been told, since the days of floppy discs, you shouldn't put anywhere near a magnet. Fair enough.

We now have a lot of Solid State Storage which as far as the average user knows is just a faster sort of disc drive.

The average user doesn't care any further than they do the same job. Nobody has explained, and why should they?, that they are compleatly different technologies and magnets arn't an issue with Solid State.

It wouldn't suprise me if 21% of Brits in the age range asked were brought up with dire magnet warnings so why should we expect any other result?.

Very very few companies do any IT training unless its for software.

If you doubt this try spending a day with your first and second line support teams and see how ignorant the majority of staff are when it comes to hardware.

[Doctor Syntax]

This magnet thing is, in fact harmless. In its day it was a piece of sound advice, On the whole it's better that it grabbed such firm hold of users' consciousness back then than if it hadn't.

[DS999]

If I had to bet, I would guess it is not harmless

I wouldn't be shocked if a neodymium magnet could do some sort of damage to a smartphone. Just because it won't cause problems for the flash doesn't mean it might not damage the sensitive MEMS devices it uses for the compass, gyroscope, and so forth.

There are a few other potentially fiddly mechanical bits in the cameras (like for higher end models that use optical image stabilization) and heck maybe even the antennas as some of those are starting to use MEMS, though I'm not sure if those have made it into smartphones.

Maybe its only a problem for as long as the magnet is nearby, and when removed it is all fine. But I'd prefer not to test that hypothesis on my own phone! Modern laptops (which is what the majority of "PCs" are these days) also have a lot of the same hardware.

[An_Old_Dog]

Superstition

"When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way. Heyyyey."

-- Stevie Wonder

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Superstition

Good quote. And very applicable since the so-called "tech generation" are nothing of the sort. The vast majority know which buttons to push, which icons to slide around the screen to make things happen, which menu items to click on. They have NO CLUE about HOW it happens or why.

The same applies to many things in life. At the most basic level, it's why some people call out the RAC or AA when they get a flat tyre. Just because someone can use a tool doesn't mean they understand the tool. And we are all guilty of that to some more or lessor extent.

[juice]

Say what?

> Compounding the problem is the age range of the users surveyed – you'd expect this cohort would be more tech-savvy

Why?

In the first instance, I'm guessing the vast majority of people quizzed aren't in the IT sector. If someone asked me how to check a boiler's safety mechanism, or how to write a legally binding mortgage contract, I'd shrug. Because neither of those are in my areas of expertise.

Beyond that, and without wanting to go too far down the "get off my lawn" path, I'd argue that even in the IT sector, people are generally becoming less tech-savvy, not more. Because, to put it simply, there's too many layers of abstraction between the hardware and the UI, and educational courses generally don't drill down more than a couple of layers deep.

Conversely, people born in the 70s and 80s learned bottom-up: we started with crude hardware, ROM-based OSs and BASIC programming languages. And then we got OSs which could be loaded from disk, fancier programming languages, and then networking. And then web browsers. And so on and so forth...

[Irongut]

Re: Say what?

Since I left that particular cohort over 10 years ago I'd expect them to be less tech savvy tbh.

For decades people have been telling me their kids will know more about tech than me because they were supposedly brought up on it. Sure they've been playing games on a tablet since they were 10 (or whatever) but I was programming computers at that age. Their kids are generally brain dead morons when it comes to tech.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Say what?

People born in the latter half of the 80s fall into the cohort. To have been in the world of the 8-bit kit you had to be older than that. But, yes, the difference is between those who started out from an urge to tinker (possibly disguised as "if I can get this working it will be a great tool in the lab") and those who bought a life-style accessory.

[m4r35n357]

Re: Say what?

PC | Phone

----------------------------------

Production | Consumption

Your data | Their data

Format it in your brain!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Say what?

unfortunately there is less and less separation with each new OS and modern "bios" features

[m4r35n357]

Re: Say what?

The Raspberry Pi does not have a "BIOS". It is the nearest thing to a PC that we are ever likely to see again.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Say what?

"unfortunately there is less and less separation with each new OS and modern "bios" features"

With UEFI, the BIOS *is* an OS. And a far more complex and complete OS than the ones I first got to play with back in the "holy trinity" days of Tandy[*]/Apple/Commodore 8-bit computers :-)

* In my case, more specifically LDOS on TRS-80, with Job Control Language "batch scripting" and "virtual" device drivers and device redirection, OS overlay files, just some of the ,features/concepts that probably came from mainframe/min computer OS

[rafff]

Re: Say what?

"we started with crude hardware, ROM-based OSs "

A ROM? I should have been so lucky. Toggle the boot sequence on the hand switches was more like it. Happy (and simpler) days.

[Helcat]

Re: Say what?

Punch cards, please!

Got to get them in the right order in the tray to be read, too.

That's why the first thing you do after putting them in the correct order is draw a diagonal line across the tops - makes spotting which ones are out of sequence much easier (especially as they also have a notch taken out of one corner...)

Was rather glad we moved to magnetic tape. Then again, that earned me overtime for every Friday I stayed late to change the tapes while backing up the server.

Then they moved to cassettes and an auto-loader...

[Fred Daggy]

Re: Say what?

Punched cards? ... Luxury.

I used to dream of having punched cards.

[DJV]

Re: Say what?

You were lucky - we had to chisel our zeros and ones onto stone tablets. Clay tablets are the work of the devil, I tell you!

[Calum Morrison]

Re: Say what?

1s and 0s? Some people had all the luck. We didn't even have the concept of a numerical system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Say what?

fingers and toes!

everything came in groups of 5, 10, or 20 but it was 1, 2, or 4 hands

now it is only diamonds and other precious gems and minerals that use that currency

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Say what?

"1s and 0s? Some people had all the luck. We didn't even have the concept of a numerical system."

Amazingly, even when numerical systems did come along, the development of binary computers was hampered by lack of a concept or representation for zero until someone in India invented it. And that took a while to spread because without the zero there could be no internet, comms still relied on physical travel!

[ecofeco]

Re: Say what?

I DO NOT miss the days of toggling pins.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Say what?

I was having exactly this argument with a recruiter a few months ago. Oh, you can't be a very good IT Tech if you can't get Teams working

At the "IT tech" end, the sole thing you can do is just plain follow the ***** installation instructions. If it fails to work, as an IT Tech there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING you can do. You need to be the programmer who - CRUCIALLY! - has access the actual code to fix it. Even as a programmer, *I* can't "fix" Teams, I don't "own" it.

[Pete 2]

Where's the _any_ button?

> you'd expect this cohort would be more tech-savvy

Only if you have never met one (that is, one who cannot code a conditional in fewer than three computer languages)

Otherwise, they are just as tech-ignorant as (non-techies) of any other age group

[ecofeco]

Re: Where's the _any_ button?

I have been shocked at the number of IT teams I've worked with who somehow had certs, but so damn little real knowledge.

Them: "This laptop should be imaging faster!"

Me: "Well it's an old laptop, low spec at that, and the network is also low bandwidth."

Them: "That's got nothing to do with it! You're just doing it wrong!"

Actual, real conversations I've had. And various other head-slappers just like it.

Oh wait! One of my favorites! So one of our network zones was, erratic. Finally had to go find the switch controlling it. Absolutely caked in dust. As in almost could not find, for all the dust. Told my teammate, we should clean it. Teammates says, I swear to god, "That shouldn't be the problem." Same site, another switch reports bad. Go find it and what looks like 20 years old cables and all of them absolutely bent at wrong angles. I say, "We need new cables." Take a wild guess what my teammate said. Go on!

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Where's the _any_ button?

Dunno what he said, but what you tell him is the cables are used to move electrons from one machine to another and eventually the cable runs out of electrons.

Why yes, I DO enjoy telling people plausible sounding bullshit! Double endorphin hits when they repeat it to others!

[Doctor Syntax]

"you'd expect this cohort would be more tech-savvy"

I'm not sure why that would be. Software abstracts away the hardware and even its own lower layers. Back in the '70s & '80s we were much closer to the nuts & blots, just as early motorists had to adjust the ignition timing and change gear without synchromesh. Nowadays only the petrolheads know much about how their cars work so why should a generation brought up on smartphones and tablets be expected to know what lies behind the carefully insulated surface?

[Anonymous Coward]

older with less tech

One of the reasons my next vehicle will be an older vehicle

[chivo243]

Re: older with less tech

both of our vehicles are 12 years old, not old enough it seems.

[A. Coatsworth]

>>I'm not sure why that would be.

My take is that it is a generation that has an insanely powerful computer basically glued to their hand almost since birth, and (in the eyes of older generations) can do wondrous things with it.

So, spending a lot of time online must correlate to technical knowlegede of what they are doing.. right? RIGHT?

It's not like people grow up thinking of the likes of Google as benevolent Santa Claus who give us amazing doodles without asking anything in return

[doublelayer]

The reason is that, while you were working with this stuff in the 1970s, a lot of the people your age weren't working with it at all. They don't understand the hardware like you do any more than a younger person who hasn't studied it does. The stereotype that young people should know how computers work isn't new, and I can't say the starting reason is wrong. A lot of people who grew up without computers use them now but not very well. As time goes on, this is weakening, but I've helped quite a few older users set up a computer who do not understand how to use it (let alone how it works). They can do a small number of things by rote memorization. For example, to read the email, you click on this mail icon. If the icon moves, they get confused. If they're using someone else's computer without the mail client, they won't know what to do. They see a young person who knows how to access their webmail on any computer, and they can see that this person knows how to make the computer do something that they, the older user, doesn't. In fact, the younger person may not understand how to set up a mail client, but in comparison, their tool lets them access their mail and the other guy's doesn't work as well, so their one seems better at the time.

They then jump to the incorrect assumption that, because the young person can make the computer do what they wanted, that they must understand how it did so. To bolster this mistaken impression, the younger person has learned some tech-related terms that the older person doesn't understand. In fact, the younger person may be using them wrong, as I'm sure we've all seen from users from time to time ("The server isn't working because the WiFi driver isn't plugged in"), but the less knowledgeable user doesn't know that. I'm sure that these younger people will get old, some new technology that they've lived without for decades will come along, and they'll be looking at their grandchildren who use it naturally and make incorrect assumptions about what they're doing. The grandchildren will in turn make incorrect assumptions about what skills their grandparents must have had just because they don't instinctively know the hand gestures needed to make the AR environment launch their game.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tech savvy Gen Z'ers

My kids are in the right cohort and in one sense are very tech savvy. They know how to use all kinds of technology efficiently and are good at picking up on new software. But they have little understanding of how anything actually works and don't even have the vocabulary to talk about it.

One of them asks me for a charger for his phone. I hand him a wall cube with two USB ports. "No, I mean a charger, you know, like you plug in." "Oh, a USB cable." I dig a USB A to C cable one out of my desk drawer. "Yeah, that's a charger, that's what I asked for." Another conversation. "I need a mic cable." "What kind? Minii-phone? Male-to-male? Or what?" "I don't know, just one of those fat mic cables." "You mean XLR?" "I don't know what it's called, it looks like ..." He draws a picture.

Or when I am doing remote tech support. My daughter calls me. "My laptop died." "What do you mean died?" "I mean it won't do anything?" "Like it won't boot up, or the display is frozen, or what? Describe it to me." "Dad, it's just sitting there, not doing anything. I thought you knew about these things." "I do. So tell me what you did and what happened and what is showing on the screen." "Daaad! I didn't do anything! I ... Oh wait, now it's doing something. Bye."

(AC for obvious reasons.)

[J.G.Harston]

And why should the general populous of /users/ be "more tech savvy" just because there's more tech around? "Radios are ubiquitous, therefore everybody should be able to build a radio." I built a radio at the age of 8 when radios had been around for 80 years. Why didn't the other 2249 pupils at my school also build a radio? They grew up with radios everywhere, they should have been "radio savvy" and should have been building radios just like me.

[Arthur the cat]

Incognito

Almost half (40 percent) of users believe that browsers' "incognito mode" makes their activity invisible to everyone

Well Hollywood and the comics industry have been telling us for decades that just a domino mask makes you totally unrecognisable to anybody, even your nearest and dearest.

[Icon mask probably wouldn't work either.]

[DJV]

Re: Incognito

Glasses work quite well, too

[Anonymous Coward]

TWD cliffhanger

Morgan: Just be careful out there, don’t get bit.

Grimes: It’s OK, I have a Mac.

[Howard Sway]

The infosec community still needs to do more to educate users on staying safe online

I don't think the responsibility is on the infosec community here though. When the biggest names in operating systems, browsers, social media and online shopping are all fully engaged in making their software as snooper-friendly as possible, to satisfy their own unlimited thirst for data on their users, it isn't surprising that this opens up so many opportunities for even more malicious activity.

Better, and clearer privacy controls that actually provide real privacy should be a higher priority, but aren't going to happen unless companies are compelled to implement them, unfortunately. The big money shareholders demanding ever more monetisation of users are a big block to this happening·

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone Mentioned The Word "Levels"

Suppose you want to understand the technology in a Morris 1000 Traveler.

There really aren't too many levels to understand:

- petrol

- combustion

- torque/gearbox

- three pedals

- steering

- brakes

- speed

Now suppose you want to understand how Amazon processes an order:

- web servers (out there)

- web browser (here)

- credit card processor (the organisation)

- credit card process

- order process (at Amazon)

- order process (at the third party retailer using Amazon)

- shipping process (somewhere)

- shipping process (at the the logistics company)

- reporting process (back up the chain shown above)

......and of course many of the items listed above are themselves many layers deep......

......and of course at the bottom (at many, many places) there's some hardware to understand.......

Is anyone surprised that this complexity is summarised by many people as "I know how to use my smartphone?"...........

[7teven 4ect]

Girlfriend

One day during a heavy gaming session with my girlfriend, I suddenly shouted 'sh!t!' and pulled the plug from my machine, grabbed a screwdriver, removed the ssd, ran to the kitchen, and popped the microwave on for 3 mins.

Her face!

3 mins later I went to the kitchen to fetch the cake from the microwave, the ssd microwaving part had been a ruse, it was a cake for her, because love. Love is the weakest link in every system.

[Blue Shirt Guy]

Re: Girlfriend

Mmmm SATAlicious.

[Bebu]

Re: Girlfriend

fetch the cake from the microwave

Cake... Microwave... what fresh hell this? Last century one baked cakes in ovens. Even the most generous addition of uxorious affection is likely to produce much of a cake from self raising flour (or plain plus yeast for real trad.), eggs, milk and sugar using a microwave oven.

Surely even in these declining days microwave ready frozen gateaux are only a pattisier's nightmare? Tell me it ain't so, please!

Dark times indeed.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Girlfriend

I can think of one good use in this situation. Chocolate Fudge Cake. Personally, I like it cold, as is, or with single cream poured over. But some people, like it heated up and then cream or icecream added. Most pub restaurants seem to always assume you want it hot, even when you specifically order it cold :-(

[Androgynous Cow Herd]

Is it not true

That Splelchick only works right if you are using Error Correcting Memory?

[ecofeco]

From the plebe to the boardroom

Misconception about tech is the rule, not the exception.

But the worst offenders are the techs, engineers and programmers themselves! They really ought to know better, but what can the smart ones do against the ever closing ranks of the incompetent?

[Bebu]

"you'd expect this cohort would be more tech-savvy"

"you'd expect this cohort would be more tech-savvy"

Not really. I have noticed the post mid to late 1980s onward cohorts don't really understand how even some of the simplest mechanisms in their lives work even at a high level. Not much better than a Cargo Cult adherent or little better than medieval superstition. It might as well be magic.

Fair enough the details of 4G/LTE are absolutely mind numbing but basics of any telephone remain the same - microphone, speaker, dialer, answer/hangup, and for cell phone - radio transmitter and receiver.

Most everyday items are based on simple ideas largely obfuscated by unnecessary features, gratuitous complexity and insidious marketing.

Come the day after, the survivors will be surrounded by a wealth of defunct technology that very few could usefully repurpose. I doubt fewer than one in a hundred could reconfigure roof top photovoltaics to work in the permanent absence of the grid - if only to charge a few car batteries to provide light at night. Although potable water and food would be a much bigger immediate problem in most cities.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: "you'd expect this cohort would be more tech-savvy"

I think it was an Asimov story, a research group got a "time scoop" working and plucked a man from the future, and interrogated him.

"Have you cured cancer?"

"Cancer? Yes, you just go to the doctor and he fixes it."

"How is it cured?"

"Well, you go to the doctor, and he gives you some medicine."

"Yes, but how does it work?"

"Well, you take the medicine."

Just because you've "grown up" with a technology does not make you an engineer in that technology. I know how to drive a car. I bearly know how the invisible pixies under the bonnet make it move. I just feed them petroleum distilate and water.

....you're going to tell me it's goblins, not pixies, aren't you.