Microsoft: One In 14 Downloads Is Malicious

alphadogg writes "About one out of every 14 programs downloaded by Windows users turns out to be malicious, Microsoft said Tuesday. And even though Microsoft has a feature in its Internet Explorer browser designed to steer users away from unknown and potentially untrustworthy software, about 5% of users ignore the warnings and download malicious Trojan horse programs anyway. IE also warns users when they're being tricked into visiting malicious websites, another way that social-engineering hackers can infect computer users. In the past two years, IE's SmartScreen has blocked more than 1.5 billion Web and download attacks, according to Jeb Haber, program manager lead for SmartScreen."

NEWSFLASH: Some People are Terminally Ignorant

[h4rr4r]

These are the same folks that only change the oil in their cars when the warning light comes on.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Well, in fairness ...

[gstoddart]

Despite Microsoft's attempts to completely nanny people, they've almost taken it too far ... which means that people start ignoring/disabling the warnings.

The other week I launched IE on a new server install ... the very first warning message is "You are about to access the internet, and people can see what you do" -- which gets a "do not show me this again" before I dismiss.

As soon as you submit into a search engine, you get told "You are about to submit something on the internet, are you sure" -- which also gets a "do not show again".

By the time I tell it I don't want it to save passwords, autocomplete forms, and that, yes, I really do want Google as my default search ... well, I've stopped listening to anything "helpful" IE is telling me.

I rank the utility of the stuff that MS has "designed" to make IE safe right up there with the error messages that amount to "something bad has happened, contact your admin" --- oooh, that's informative. And, since I'm the admin ... give me some f'ing idea as to what went wrong so I can try to fix it.

Microsoft build in really pedantic and lame safeguards, which get turned off and/or ignored for the rest of time since they don't actually do anything useful.

I've ignored the warnings...

[wilgibson]

and yes that means I use IE. But, when it consistently tells me things like Downloader_Diablo2_enUS.exe can harm my computer after downloading it from battle.net I tend to not believe in its ability to really determine if something is malicious or not. As always, proper instruction on internet safety will go farther than a security feature that any idiot can bypass.

Re:"Malicious"

[Missing.Matter]

antivirusotherthansecurityessentials.exe

I know you're joking, but this one is pretty close to the truth. Norton and McAffee do more to slow down computers than actual malware does.

Re:Yes, We're Doing Great Work

[h4rr4r]

Only for very blatant lies. Otherwise I would be suing damn near every company that ever had an advertisement.

Re:This is actually part of a bigger problem

[mr1911]

For example, email. On a personal level many of my friends and family have stopped using it and require me to communicate via Facebook. The problem for me is that I don't have a Facebook account. The problem for them is that they don't want spam.

Huh? The vast majority of what shows up on Facebook is spam. OK, maybe not in the traditional sense given the spam is whatever inane thing someone decides to post rather than a Viagra ad. Oh, you mean the private message thing that no one seems to know how to use because they post conversations in their statuses?