“In running a computer repair business, I think I am seeing more PCs in a typical week than the average bear. And there are some trends emerging that I think are really disturbing. The spyware and adware people really are ruining the computing experience for a lot of us,” James Derk writes for Scripps Howard News Service.
“After returning a computer to a grateful customer, more often than not they will ask, ‘How did all of this junk even get on my PC?’ And more often than not, it was not something they did intentionally. A pop-up will jump out and say ‘you have spyware on your PC! Click here to remove it.’ Many people will do just that and WHAMMO you’re infected. More infections will build on those and pretty soon your PC is unusable thanks to hundreds of pop-ups or slowed down to a crawl via tons of spyware,” Derk writes.
“Removing it is no big deal if you’re comfortable with the Windows registry and some of the current tools out there. But what percentage is the computing population is that? I have to wonder how many people are running screaming to Apple products just for this scourge alone,” Derk writes.
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Study: Apple’s Mac OS X ‘world’s safest and most secure’ operating system – November 02, 2004
Sick of spyware, adware infecting your PC? Don’t fret, just get a Mac – November 01, 2004
Spyware plagues Windows users while Mac users surf Net with impunity – November 01, 2004
Mossberg: Apple iMac G5 ‘powerful, affordable, virus-free with better, more modern OS than Windows XP’ – September 23, 2004
next thing you know, they are gonna blame Apple for writing the spyware LOL
“next thing you know, they are gonna blame Apple for writing the spyware”
It’s a conspiracy, y’know. And Bush is behind that, too, just like he’s responsible for acne, people tripping on sidewalks…
…people getting shot at in Iraq, cigarettes killing thousands of people every month…
mike prefers people getting killed by terrorists in the US instead of Iraq.
mike doesn’t think anyone who smokes is responsible for their own health..
I personally wish a lot more people were switching to the Mac than appear to be. Apple has to really start advertising Macs and their OS… but I preach to the choir here.. :p
The last bear I took my PC to to fix just roared and chased me through the woods.
True, those people getting killed in Iraq would certainly be getting killed by Terrorists in the United States just the same.
The trouble is that Apple can’t really advertise it as virus free because there will be such a backlash of negative publicity at the slightest whiff of a virus.
Yeah, and those Iraqi militants are all just a bunch of peace loving souls that would never hurt anyone, muchless support those that fly planes into buildings or blow up train stations.
Hit iraqi (and others) -> more young iraqis and others join the jihad movement -> more terrorists -> more people killed in and outside US. So which part of this chain reaction the majority of American don’t seem to understand (or should I say care)?
A high percentage of Americans believe in God. A ludicrous number believe in the literal truth of the Bible, which was written by man and selectively edited over hundreds of years for the benefit of the politicians/church (the two go hand in hand).
Why are these people afraid of dying ? Won’t the terrorists get them up to heaven sooner ?
[i[Priests and fools say
we are but�animate clay,
but rude vessels
housing immortal souls
But the dead only quickly decay
They don’t go about being born and reborn
and rising and falling like souffl�
The dead only quickly decay
It would be swell
to see some folks burn in Hell
but when they go
it’s just as pleasant to know
that the dead only quickly decay
They don’t go about being born and reborn
and rising and falling like souffl�
The dead only quickly decay
Think running a Mac means you are invulnerable? Not so
http://search.us-cert.gov/query.html?rq=0&ht=0&qp;=&qs;=&qc;=&pw=100%&ws=1&la;=&qm=0&st=1&nh=25&lk=1&rf=2&oq;=&rq=0&si=1&qt=Mac+OS+X
Security Begins at Home.
Think running a Mac means you are invulnerable? Not so
http://search.us-cert.gov/query.html?rq=0&ht=0&qp;=&qs;=&qc;=&pw=100%&ws=1&la;=&qm=0&st=1&nh=25&lk=1&rf=2&oq;=&rq=0&si=1&qt=Mac+OS+X
Security Begins at Home.
well, if your mom got decapitated by a bomb blowing your house to bits, you’d probably change from a peace loving guy to a militant too. And then some armchair asshole in the United States would type into an MDN forum about how you were a Terrorist from the beginning.
G-go-spank-yo-self
The Iraqis didn’t need terrorists to kill them, they had Saddam.
As the mass graves have demonstrated.
Hywel
The same can be said of Muslims and the Koran. The difference being that American Christians aren’t preaching “Death to the infidel Muslims” in their churches.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it (then pass it on back).
Wow, “mike” got spanked pretty good.
And “Hywel”, too. Cool.
You insidious cretins can’t get it through your heads that most Iraqi’s welcomed the Coalition involvement in cleansing their nation of scumbags, from Saddam on down.
As to the infection issue, we (long-time Mac users) will all look back on this time period one day and see it as the beginning of the flood that it was. It’s sooooooo good to be living through this turn of events . . . as in, people turning AWAY from the Wintel PC! My Apple stock is just so very, very pretty to look at nowadays. I CAN’T WAIT until mid-January and Apple’s next quarterly report. Whooo!!!
BTW . . . (sarcasm) nice prose, Hywel (/sarcasm).
Found: 46 Secunia Security Advisories
Mac OS X URI Handler Arbitrary Code Execution
2004-05-17
Apple Filing Protocol Insecure Implementation
2004-03-01
Mac OS X Security Update Fixes Multiple Vulnerabilities
2004-10-05
Apple Mac OS X Security Update Fixes iChat Vulnerability
2004-09-17
Mac OS X Security Update Fixes Multiple Vulnerabilities
2004-09-08
Mozilla / Mozilla Firefox Apple Java Plugin Tab Spoofing Vulnerability
2004-08-30
Netscape Apple Java Plugin Tab Spoofing Vulnerability
2004-08-27
Mac OS X Security Update Fixes Multiple Vulnerabilities
2004-08-10
Apple Mac OS X Internet Connection Privilege Escalation
2004-07-27
Mac OS X Multiple Unspecified Vulnerabilities
2004-05-30
Mac OS X Volume URI Handler Registration Code Execution Vulnerability
2004-05-22
Mac OS X Security Update Fixes Multiple Vulnerabilities
2004-05-04
Mac OS X Security Update Fixes Multiple Vulnerabilities
2004-04-07
Mac OS X Security Update Fixes Multiple Vulnerabilities
2004-02-24
Mac OS X Security Update Fixes Multiple Vulnerabilities
2004-01-27
Mac OS X Local Denial of Service Vulnerability
2004-01-05
Mac OS X Security Update Fixes Multiple Vulnerabilities
2003-12-22
Mac OS X cd9660.util Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
2003-12-16
Mac OS X Insecure Default DHCP Packet Handling Vulnerability
2003-11-27
Mac OS X Security Update Fixes Multiple Vulnerabilities
2003-11-20
Mac OS X Terminal Application Unspecified Vulnerability
2003-11-06
Don’t Gloat, 2005 could be much worse.
“The difference being that American Christians aren’t preaching ‘Death to the infidel Muslims’ in their churches.”
Nah. Only Jerry Falwell.
Happy New Year,
And the point is?…
Apple fixes flaws in their OS –before– there is a problem?
Yes, and let’s all thank Be Careful & Updated for screwing up the layout on the page for all us small window browsers. Hint, dummy, use code like so.
So now that we got rid of Saddam, we are killing Iraqi’s. Yes yes yes, this Iraq war has been good for killing people – our soldiers, their civilians, and the insurgents that have spawned in the wake of our invasion. Killing people good, somehow helps war on Terror.
LRL,
You must be one of those illiterates who think that there’s a link between Iraq and Al Queda.
Well here’s a news flash. Your buddies in the Bush administration have admitted it. Still, their minions seem to have missed it! That means you! Sheesh.
At least I bit my tongue while I lied to the UN. You fools swallow the lies hook, line and sinker!
CP
Happy New Year,
You dork. That whole list is less than what happened on the Windows platform in the past freaking week!
Get some perspective, because you are sorely lacking in that area.
Yeah, go screaming to a local apple retail store today!
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http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@204.V9AYawUfAjh.1@.5998b321
Last I heard 80% of Iraqes wanted the US gone and I’m sure that the 100 thousand or so dead Iraqi civilians are probably not happy with being liberated. We are generating terrorists in Iraq, and the middle east in general, much faster than we can kill them. A US invasion of Iraq is, I’m sure, an Al-Quada wet dream.
In the long run it’s going to turn out that the only thing holding Iraq together was Hussein. Without a brutal bastard like Saddam running the country, all the religious nutjobs start trying to get the upper hand and whammo, you’ve got the current situation.
And meanwhile we are almost compleatly unprotected at home and the millitary is falling appart at the seams because it is so overextended.