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Comment by progolferyo | Hacker News Reader

As a PC turned Mac user for the last 3 years, this is truly the best thing about working on the Mac platform. My girlfriend is still on her shitty HP laptop and it is so incredibly painful to watch her worry about viruses and malware on a daily basis.

I hope Apple's policy around this is not going to be sweep it under the rug because it could get out of control as Apple market share grows and more effort is dedicated towards hacking the Mac.

As stupid as this story is, it is still something that Apple is gonna have to probably start paying more and more attention to, given the trajectory of Apple market share in the future and the increased effort will be taken towards the Mac platform.

I think

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My girlfriend is still on her shitty HP laptop and it is so incredibly painful to watch her worry about viruses and malware on a daily basis.

WTF is your gf doing on a daily basis? Does she do reviews of shady porn sites? Install MSE (it's free) on your gf's computer and tell her not to install programs sent in email from people. Then tell her to stop worrying.

And if she does do reviews of shady porn sites, tell her to use a VM.

This blame the user bullshit has to end. My own girlfriend got a virus (it was hostage-ware to be precise) last year and doesn't visit porn sites, runs up-to-date anti-virus, and keeps Windows up-to-date and patched. She knows better to run random shit sent to her via email. She's very defensive and doesn't even open an email that looks shady. It was probably a drive-by-download, Flash, PDF, or Java, I don't know. Running combofix, anti-spyware scanners, and everything I could find on forums didn't help. She wasn't happy that I had to wipe her HDD.

It is painful to watch her worry about viruses.

All it takes is one or two mistakes. Typo in URL, click a link, blindly click past a prompt that you should be reading, and you have malware and you probably didn't even notice it, no matter how smart your girlfriend is.

Ad networks. Or just a reputable site screwing up. People often mention porn sites or incorrect urls, but it's worth repeating that the user doesn't necessarily have to do anything wrong.

This blame the user bullshit has to end.

Honestly, if you worry about viruses, it's your own fault. Period. Either get a different kind of computer. Don't use a computer. Or don't use the internet. Worrying about an event that isn't likely to happen with reasonable precautions is irrational.

Sure zero-days happen that aren't patched yet, but those are rare. Nuclear meltdowns happen to, but I don't worry about it.

My point wasn't that it was her fault for getting a virus. But rather why is she worrying about it on a daily basis? The only sensible rationale is that she's doing something where the risk is relatively high.

And if it is painful to watch her worry about viruses, you should do something. Either get her to do something less risky -- whether its change OSes, stop using the internet, etc... Or get counseling for her. I've just never heard of someone so worried about it, and further never seen anyone in pain due to the irrational worries of computer viruses in a loved one.

And I know I sound like a jerk for saying all of this, but honestly, I think you'd both be much happier with some relatively simple changes in life.

The real 'shitty' thing about HP, and many other Windows laptops isn't even the malware, it's the @#$@# that the manufactures pre-install on these laptops and desktops that they sell. Three years ago my gf and I ordered HP laptops and had to use a program called Crap Remover to get rid of all the Nortan Antivirus junk, the HP software bundled junk and all the preinstalled crapware junk they put on it. After that it ran fine (as fine as Vista got that is) with MSE.

There isn't much apple can do in a practical sense.

People clueless enough to run an Installer based on an web ad popup are unlikely to be reading Apple's PR posts.

Aside from OS specific code that refuses to install anything called Mac Defender, Apple has no power over this problem.

You've basically described 10.6's anti-malware 'solution', although obviously its little plist file hasn't been updated to include Mac Defender yet.

LOL

...and to me, that sounded kind of silly...

A positive step for Lion is that they've started actively engaging members of the exploit research community, although details are scarce on what that means or how seriously they'll take their advice.

Proper ASLR and sandboxing Safari by default would help a lot, I think.

This isn't about an exploitable, remote attack vector. This is about giving someone instructions on installing software to hijack their computer and them willingly complying.

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