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Comment by lol768 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not convinced this is as big an issue as has been made out here.

Why would you click a link and then voluntarily send an email with a file called "passwd" or "secring.gpg" in the attachments list?!

Perhaps you could show a scarier warning or something, rather than just declaring the functionality unacceptably dangerous and removing it. There are genuine use-cases discussed in this thread. At the end of the day, the user needs to accept responsibility for things they voluntarily do on their machine.

Generally though, I'm not sure this functionality makes much sense if it's initiated from a web-page. If you had another app on your machine though, that already had disk access, it might make sense to be able to launch the email client with something pre-attached.

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It is a big issue, and it's not surprising some hackers wouldn't understand how big.

A lot of people, most even, have no idea what is happening on about 90% of their screen, about 90% of the time. And they're used to being forever in the dark about what their machine is doing and why. They expect it.

They know they're writing an email and they can see the box they're typing into, but other components, like the status bar, title bar, and attachments field, are outside their sphere of perception. At least or especially when they're not actively thinking about attaching a file intentionally, say.

It's like a serious chess player, who sees the whole board and thinks multiple moves ahead, compared to a novice who learnt the rules yesterday and can only see the horsey piece and the pieces immediately surrounding the horsey piece.

These users have a checklist approach to using their computer:

Step 1: click this

Step 2: that happens

Step 3: Did what I wanted to happen, happen?

Step 4: there is no step 4

The professor who didn't realize there's a "fullscreen" button when showing videos to the class is the same one who can't perceive the attachments field and will send a file called 'passwd'. And if the mail client puts up an alert that says, "Are you sure you want to attach and send a file called passwd to p0wn.me@gmail.com?", they'll click 'Yes' and get on with their day.

I think you are correct with your assessment of how most people use computers.

But I don't agree with your conclusion that they need to be protected. If I want to hammer in a nail and accidentally hit my finger that's not the hammer-manufacturer's fault or responsibility. So why should it be the email-client's fault/responsibility to make sure I don't send my private keys?

If people refuse to learn how to use a hammer they will keep hitting their fingers, if people are refuse to learn how to use their email-client they will keep sending their private keys to bad actors.

I didn't conclude that the email client needs to warn users about dangerous attachments- I mentioned that even if it did, users would ignore it.

But I do believe that UX needs to be designed according to the principle of least surprise, and those in the know (i.e. we/us), need to put in guardrails to keep people safe as they get on with their day.

If your hammer has 4,500 different everyday functions, 4,400 of them posing a danger to your fingers & bank account, but hammering nails is necessary for your job, for your kids' school stuff, and to interact with your government, then that's a closer analogy.

Do you put poison-tipped needles on the handle of your hammer, because you might want them, and it's possible to avoid them when you don't want to touch them?

But your hammer can't be manipulated by a random person anywhere in the world.

Software, especially an email client, is significantly more complex. Many people don't have the time, desire, nor ability, to learn how to use it safely - and the usage of it is generally forced upon them.

Let's make things safe by default.

It's extreme dangerous to assume that "hackers" are perfect robots who have no need for good UI/UX. If that was ever true, it became false as computer systems got 10000000x more complicated over the decades.

And even if you know how computers work, sometimes things just escape your attention because life.

Take a computer-nonliterate but otherwise functionally competent adult with very limited vision (macular degeneration, glaucoma, etc.), onset of cognitive disorders (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, TIAs, ...) but compelled to use computers for some functions (utility payments, banking, government services, remote comms, socialisation, hobbies & interests).

The world contains numerous people who are not tech-savvy, capable, digital natives. And even a large fraction of that population would fall prey to attacks of this nature.

Please show more awareness and compassion. Perhaps beginning with your handle.

> Take a computer-nonliterate but otherwise functionally competent adult with very limited vision (macular degeneration, glaucoma, etc.), onset of cognitive disorders (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, TIAs, ...) but compelled to use computers for some functions (utility payments, banking, government services, remote comms, socialisation, hobbies & interests).

How far do you want to take this? At the end of the day you need to understand what's going on - otherwise you're going to visit a site presenting a self-signed cert and just click the "let me bypass this warning" button before handing over your creds.

It's no different to being phoned up by a scammer and being asked to transfer money for a "tax refund". What can we do about that technically? We try. We add warnings when customers initiate a bank transfer but at the end of the day it's their money and they must be free to send it where they please. So there has to be a focus on education, _as well as_ technological methods to try and protect the user.

> The world contains numerous people who are not tech-savvy, capable, digital natives. And even a large fraction of that population would fall prey to attacks of this nature.

There's a difference between being "tech-savvy, digital natives" and understanding the basics of how things like your email client work - and what it displays when it's going to send attachments.

I'm tired of this attitude that people are helpless and that understanding some basic aspects of the technology they use on a daily basis is completely forever out of their reach. It's patronising, and it leads to us "dumbing down" software (see Chrome and the address bar).

> Please show more awareness and compassion.

I've acknowledged that a warning may go some ways to improving this situation, but I absolutely stand by:

- The functionality had some genuine usage in the form of desktop software that opened up the mail client with e.g. crash logs attached. - Removing the functionality entirely rather than exploring how to do it in a safer (read: not safe) way was an over-reaction and we've lost something potentially useful as a result.

> Perhaps beginning with your handle.

Perhaps you could focus on the points being made _in the body of_ the next comment you reply to?

The example given is drawn from immediate experience and illustrates my own slow-dawning awareness of the gulf and its implications from my heady days as a 1990s Linux & free software advocate. I still think they're great tools. I no longer think most people, certainly not most present adults, will profitably use them.

Most people do not have a functional model of how things work, they have a process model, possibly more accurately a ritualistic model, of action and effect. "I do A and B happens." There is no "because C" causal explanation, or any such notions are hopelessly inaccurate, often mythical or animistic.

Population-level computer literacy has been studied, and the results are frankly gutstopping. Usability expert Jacob Nielsen wrote on this in 2016:

Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

He's referencing a 216,000 participant OECD study:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264258051-en

"Below level one" describes 14% of the adult population, for which typical skills are "Delete this email message". "Level one" (29% of the population) can assign categories or use search features, say, in email. "Level 2" (26%) could accomplish a task such as "You want to find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year". Level 3 is the highest skill level, representing 5% of the population.

If you've been noting totals you might have twigged that we're only to 74% of the population. That is because fully 26% of adults have no effective computer literacy.

And 69% of the population in total (none, <1, 1) have at best extraordinarily limited skills and understanding. Whilst there's some variance among OECD populations (Finland does better, Turkey poorly), the shifts aren't that great. Human cognitive distribution is something we have to live with: all the children are not above average.

You may be tired of this fact but it remains the best interpretation of the evidence.

I'm certainly frustrated by this, on multiple grounds. It means that general-population digital tools must be targeted to the minimum viable user. It means that the advanced-user community is a very minor market segment, at least by units. It means that consequences of poor technical literacy are born by all of us. That's wrapped up in an essay "The Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User":

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...

But no, really, it's not as bad as I portrayed above. It's far worse.

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