Before you jump down my throat, hear me out. This post first came to mind after I read a story about which countries had the highest software piracy rates. The U.S. was close to the bottom, or top, whichever way you want to look at it, they had one of the lowest rates of any country.
Why is this? A few things came to mind. 1) We have a high standard of living and can pay the outrageous prices for software, where someone in the Philippines making $3.00/hr cannot. 2) They have a higher regard for businesses and would rather buy software than steal it. 3) The U.S. public is years behind the rest of the world when it comes to computer literacy
But the tipping point came after reading this. If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, here is the lowdown. A security company was hired by a credit union to determine how secure their network was. Normally the company would try to fit in with a group of employees and get access to passwords and such to compromise the network. This time, they tried something a little different and completely genius. They got a handful of usb drives and loaded them with a trojan that would gather the users passwords, login info, etc. and email it back to them. The drives were then scattered in the parking lot and other places frequented by employees. After three days, 15 of the 20 flash drives were plugged into company computers which were then compromised by the trojan. The takeaway. Most people just aren’t computer savvy enough to understand the risks that they face everyday they use their personal computer.
How come it seems that so many other nations have embraced technology and are churning out programmers and engineers at a dizzying pace. We still can’t figure out that if you get an email from Farquar Mohammed with an attachment that promises riches beyond our wildest dreams, NOT to open it. People, we have not figured out how to email physical items. So no matter how bad you think there could be a pot of gold in your inbox, you’re out of luck (I am forcing myself not to turn this post into a security beating, maybe later).
I was listening to a tech-help podcast the other day and the guy told the lady to open her “My Computer”. Her response was that she couldn’t because she was not connected to the internet….wow.
Another one where a guy called and was asking about RAM. He just bought a computer and got it loaded with 4 Gigs of RAM! OK, let me clear something up. I do a lot of work with programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Flash, Dreamweaver, etc. A lot of times I will have 3 or 4 of them open at the same time along with a browser window with multiple tabs (Firefox plug). I only run 1 Gig of RAM. Anything more than that and you had better be doing large scale image editing or advanced video rendering. More is not always better!
The sad thing is, that although both of these examples were of adults, teenagers are most of the time the worst offenders. Forwarding more damn emails every day than the best spammers that Taiwan has to offer. Downloading anything they can get their hands of that only results in PC’s being bloated with spyware and adware (Hey, look at this great package of smilies that I can download. Cool!). Aren’t the kids suppose to be the future? Aren’t they suppose to be the computer savvy ones who can fix any computer problem know to man grandma. Maybe schools should start offering computer literacy classes in elementary schools (maybe this would just be the blind leading the blind come to think of it). Whatever the solution, everyone should be better informed of how to use their PC more safely and effectively.
Is this enough evidence to put the U.S. computer literacy rate behind Uzbekistan? Obviously not. But hopefully this will bring to light the fact that we have a long way to go if we want to maintain our technology edge over other countries. So the next time you see your friend visiting getavirus.com, please remember this article.
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