It does make me wonder though about the majority of internet users who just about know how to plug their ADSL modem in or reboot it if the network crashes...
X105,
You've hit the nail on the head there.
THAT is the absolute example of why the current IT industry has to change radically away from the box-shifting model. It's all about sell, sell, sell .... for example, to become a "Microsoft Gold Partner", it's 95% about how much Microsoft stuff you sell and 5% about trained staff and satisified customers. The same for most other names out there, so I'm not just picking on Microsoft.
If home users were adequatley educated and supported post-sales, particularly in relation to security many problems would be greatly reduced, if not almost eradicated ..... propagation of viruses , botnets and spam relays being one of them !
But even if they don't want to spend the money on post-sales hand-holding, many of the products out there could easily be more secure "out of the box" with minimal additional development cost to the manufacturer/developer.
Taking your example, WHY should uPNP be enabled by default ? It should have been your explicit choice to enable it once you had clicked "OK" to half a dozen popups telling you how bad it could be !
WHY should the default Windows acount have administrator rights ? 99% of what you do on your PC does not need admin rights !
Anyway, I could rant all day , but I'll stop here ... since nobody with any significant influence in the IT industry cares anyway, as long as they get their fat salary at the end of the month and the company that employs them manages to snatch a few measly percent more market share from the nearest competitor !
Now to pluck up the courage to use Putty.exe
Feel free to come back and ask questions, I'm sure one of us will pluck up the courage to help you ! I'm sure you'll be fine though ! Just don't do the famous "rm -rf /" !
