Good News for Hackers: 90 Percent of Desktops Are Unsafe for Online Banking and Shopping

While Windows owns 90% of desktop market share, New South Wales police in Australia believes that Windows is unsafe for online banking and Shopping. They actually recommend the popular open source Ubuntu Linux distro. Well, while this might be horrifying for those 90% of desktop users, it is good news for hackers and criminals! This is because of two reasons: 1) most computer savvy people already use Linux, and 2) a small proportion of all Windows users are security savvy. The combination of these two factors make Windows a heaven for all kinds of security attacks because it’s user-base is a big concentration of security non-savvy. Of course, it is easy to go out and recommend the Linux alternative. But can people switch to the open source platform?

If we look at things from a technology lockin point of view, we’re to admit that it is not so easy. Consumers are used to Windows interface for more than a decade. Although Linux’ user interface is very similar to that of Windows, a lot of people still won’t be able to use it because they have memorized things in Windows. What I mean is that most users don’t ‘understand’ the logic behind the windowing system. They just want to get something done and they memorize how to do it on Windows. These people aren’t going to be able to use Linux even if it is only for browsing. The worst thing is that they are most probably going to own outdated-non-patched version of Windows.

It all seems that going out there and shipping application to people is not always going to be a productivity gain. Let me clarify this statement by taking the example of online shopping. Online shopping works because 1) people save time traveling to different stores, and 2) they can take as much time as they want to to visit all the virtual stores (because they don’t have to pay for travel). Therefore, there is real gain and value in shopping online. But what is not said here is the danger of being intercepted by thieves. Of course this can happen for someone who goes out to buy shoes and gets robs on his way to the store. But there is a difference between buying in the ‘real’ world and buying online. The difference is that most people have learned to deal with real world threats. This is part of our education to take security measures whenever it is needed.

When it comes to the online world, people have not received the proper training to deal with all those threats out there. This means that they were not able to assess the risk correctly. We know that vasts sums of money were made because of widespread adoption of information technology only because the bright side of things have been told to people. “Go on and buy all you can: it’s not like someone can come and rob you on the Internet”. Those who have gained by this widespread adoption have in a sense conspired with hackers who are taking advantage of the situation.