I don’t know if anyone else is picking up on this, but computer viruses are increasingly becoming a class issue. An article in today’s newspaper revealed that the author of the Mydoom virus which is now racing around the net deliberately chose to target home users rather than corporate, government or military users.
Home users are ‘soft targets’ for virus writers. They often barely understand the computer that they have purchased. They use whatever software came with it. If the computer comes with Outlook Express, they use Outlook Express. If Outlook Express turns out to be a highly efficient virus delivery agent that also sends and receives email, well then, nothing to be done.
Tell your average home user that they should change their email program over to something else (like the excellent Mozilla Thunderbird) and get ready for the blank stare.
And then there’s anti-virus software. Buy a new computer and you will probably get something installed with it. But if you don’t pay to renew the license, you don’t get protection. And if you don’t update the virus lists, you’re not protected.
Home users suffer both a lack of funds and a lack of knowledge and they are increasingly the intended target of malicious attacks like Mydoom.
They are also, increasingly, working class people. The very rich will have the latest and best anti-virus software on their machines. They will be accessing the net through secure corporate networks, behind firewalls, and will rarely be exposed to problems. And if they do have a problem, they simply ring up the folks in the IT department who will come and fix it.
With help lines costing as much as
I enjoyed your article up until the reference to Hamas. I think that comment (although true) is biased and perpetuates the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim = Terrorist mentality. If you mention Hamas, then you should also mention the Israelis who are killing working class Palestinians. T
Yes, virus writters target users who do not know what they are doing. Why? Because that’s the only way that an e-mail virus is going to be spread. I mean, it’s not like the old viruses that you’d get on your floppies in the 80s from the factory.
Promoting open source is not going to cure you of viruses. The reasone we advocates of open source see less viruses on our systems is that WE know how to PROTECT ourselves against them, so the coders don’t really bother us. Once you get many more people using OSS, you’ll see the viruses targeting open source operating systems and software too.
However, I fail to see how this is a condition caused by class, rather than by people preying on ignorence.
Dear Eric: Upon reading your article I immediately downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird and tried to make it my default receiver for e-mail. It won’t pick up my mail and I get a message “failed to connect to comcast.example.net” Admittedly I don’t know much about this, but am game to learn. I followed all instructions EXACTLY. Can you help me out or should I dump Mozilla?
As you probably know, they don’t answer e-mail. They said as much, but I tried anyway and am getting nowhere.
Hey, Eric — In the 1960s I lived in Watertown MA right next to Belmont, which was national headquarters for the John Birch Society. I was raising my children then, so you can see that I’m an older person and am justified in being kind of out of it.
My question is: What’s with the JBS moniker? It really confused me. Please send background, particularly on how JBS got into your head.
dear pemdasi: Since when is ignorance not a class issue? Bush is counting on it _heavily_, and trying to promote it in every way he can. People have to vote against their own interests if he is going to succeed.
It’s a pretty big stretch to say that just because viruses target home users, it’s a class issue. Do you have any actual data to back that up, or is this merely idle conjecture? From my experience home computer users are, wealthy or not, simply more apt to be inexperienced, and it’s ignorance that viruses target, not class.
For “proof” of this, look no further than your average college campus, on which viruses are a constant headache. Your average college student is likely to be relatively affluent, but that doesn’t make them any less likely to contract and transmit computer viruses…
Home users are soft targets, I agree, but for about a dozen reasons other than their class.
A lot of comments to answer here, but I’ll be brief.
I tried to make the point that people who have money tend to have the latest anti-virus protection, tend to have the newest computers with their built-in firewalls, will have no hesitation about calling tech support or paying for upgrades to their anti-virus software, and so on. People with money will tend to be more educated, as well. What’s hard to understand about that? But what prompted me to write this was the experience I’ve had working with working-class people on computers. The fact is, working-class people came late to computers, came late to the Internet, and came without a lot of training and education. Which is what makes them especially vulnerable.
A number of new articles about the spread of computer viruses are emphasizing the role played by greed — people read these messages and think they may get something cheap or for free. The rich are not in the least tempted by the offer of low-cost loans or mortgages, or prescription drugs at a discount, or anything like that. Spam is aimed at people without money — as are most scams.
Aargh! Comment spam. You need MT-Blacklist…
Jan Boudart: if you’re looking for Mozilla support, you can’t go past the MozillaZine forums:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/
Whenever I’ve had even the slightest problem with either Thunderbird or Firefox, someone’s usually already answered the question!
I’ve just posted something about this (a little late I know but better late than never). Briefly, I think you’re right about working class people being more vulnerable to viruses but wrong about open source being an answer for them. Check out my link (and why not turn on trackback?)
I came here as a result of David Brake’s blog. Just a couple of points:
1) In the Sasser virus outbreak it is the more recent Micro$oft systems that have been vulnerable. Those of us buying reconditioned laptops with Win ME on are not affected but can spread the virus.
2) HP and others are selling Linux systems into third world countries now – and some governments are funding Linux solutions, notably Thailand.
3) The Birmingham Libraries run the Birmingham People’s Network and they went for Sun hardware and a supported Unix with StarOffice. I asked librarians if anyone had problems adapting to the rather different system – the view was that younger people just clicked away and sorted how to use the Word processor quickly enough. Older people mainly wanted Web access and Netscape looks basically similar to MS Internet Explorer.