[IP] Microsoft's festive advice: Don't plug our PCs into the Web
Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 18:53:49 -0300
From: Claudio Gutierrez <cgutierrez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Microsoft's festive advice: Don't plug our PCs into the Web
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
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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