When Television Doesn’t Help

Did anyone else catch the Leslie Stahl interview on 60 Minutes last night? Although everything was accurate, I would say that the intensity level was 11 on a scale of 10.

Anyone who might have never worked online before, but was considering it, will never do anything that silly again.

I wasn’t sure what it was that was so forceful about the piece, but something about the views, with carefully sculpted pictures of the computers, the screens with all that was going on, and then the very specific instance of Leslie and her online experience. The point was brought home with all the power of a twenty pound sledge hammer. I’m not sure anyone was able to concentrate on what was being said after the statistics were given. The man from Symantec said he had never had a problem.

Perhaps that point should have been made a second time.

Usually, people are only infected once before they get the idea that protection is needed. Anyone who gets infected more than once is either very stupid or very, very unlucky.

For many, knowing that the latest worm problem is called Conficker is of little importance. It is much more important to instill proper methods of working on a computer. Also helpful would be a smattering of common sense.

The thing I fear is the more attention is given to the malware authors, the more that malware will be seen as a way to obtain notoriety. I’m certain that those Russian young men will certainly be doing screen grabs of their pictures as featured on the show – kind of a ‘hometown boy makes good’ – except that it isn’t good.

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