Teacher's porn case highlights problem with Windows

Stan Beer
Thursday, 07 June 2007 21:18

Opinion and Analysis

Substitute teacher Julie Amero, erroneusly convicted of exposing her seventh grade class to porn on her Windows computer, can breathe a sigh of relief that saner heads prevailed in her case. However, this case is not just about teachers and children being exposed to popup spyware porn. It's about Windows itself and its inherent security or lack thereof.

Most of us with Windows PCs know that if you surf the net without appropriate security, you have a good chance of being infected with spyware, adware, Trojans, viruses and various other malwares just as Julie Amero's classroom computer was. However, because we're so locked in to Windows we feel that we have no choice. So we spend somewhere between $50 and $100 a year for subscription to Norton, McAfee, Kapersky, CA, Windows Live OneCare or something else.

There's an obvious problem here. Windows is not a free operating system. Whether we bought it with our computer or not, we non-pirate users paid good money for Windows. That being the case, why should we have to pay extra just so we can use it?

And let there be no doubt that, unless you're permanently offline, Windows on its own is totally unusable. No doubt, Microsoft would be quite happy to integrate OneCare with the operating system and put Norton, McAfee and the rest out of business. However, this would raise the ire of antitrust campaigners. Anyway, given Microsoft's security track record, it would be hard for many users to put their faith in the company to keep their systems safe.

Of course, Microsoft promises us that Vista has addressed most of the security issues of previous Windows versions. However, the company said similar things when Windows 2000 and XP were released so the chances are if we want to keep using Windows we need a security package.

This begs the original question why should we pay for Windows security. The answer of course is that we shouldn't; Microsoft should. Without security, Windows is not fit to be used, and therefore is worth nothing. If Microsoft is going to charge us for Windows, then it should provide us with say a three-year subscription to a choice of security packages from a list of approved vendors for no additional charge.

Microsoft, which has become one of the richest companies in the world off the obscene profits it makes from its Windows monopoly, would of course not want to pay for our security. Perhaps it's time for the users who made Microsoft rich to demand it.