Microsoft's festive advice: Don't plug our PCs into the Web

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 18:53:49 -0300
From: Claudio Gutierrez <cgutierrez () improvement cl>
Subject: Microsoft's festive advice: Don't plug our PCs into the Web
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>

Its slogan is "where do you want to go today?" But Microsoft asks that if 
you get a Windows computer for Christmas,don't take it to one particular 
place: the internet.

At least, the company says, not until you've been to the shops again to buy 
extra software, and protected the system from the deluge of viruses and 
worms that target the flaws in Microsoft's software as soon as you take it 
online.

<snip>

Microsoft's advice features in a new page on - inevitably - its website, 
entitled "Protect New PCs Before Connecting to the Internet".

Anyone who manages to go online to read it without being infected will find 
the company warning users to obtain anti-virus software, and turn on a 
protection system called a "firewall" (which new versions of Windows 
include, yet the company leaves turned off) before they venture online.

But as Simon Moores, an internet consultant, pointed out yesterday, the 
software giant's admonitions "place the world in a catch-22: you can't be 
sure that it's safe to go online unless you connect to the internet and get 
a huge file of security updates from Microsoft, and new anti-virus files - 
which are also only available online".

http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/news/story.jsp?story=475921

--
Claudio Gutiérrez
Business Improvement Ltda.
http://www.improvement.cl


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