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!

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.

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

Cheers!

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

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.

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

And wipe thoroughly!

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.

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.

>>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...

"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.

"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.

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.

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

-- Stevie Wonder

> 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...

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.

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.

PC | Phone

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

Production | Consumption

Your data | Their data

Format it in your brain!

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

"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.

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...

Punched cards? ... Luxury.

I used to dream of having punched cards.

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!

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

> 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

"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?

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

>> 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

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.]

[1]Glasses work quite well, too

[1] https://kerrycallen.blogspot.com/2011/07/super-antics-2.html

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

Grimes: It’s OK, I have a Mac.

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·