Eric Lee: Mydoom as a class issue
Eric Lee: Mydoom as a class issue
Home users suffer both a lack of funds and a lack of knowledge and they are increasingly the intended target of malicious attacks like Mydoom.
They are also, increasingly, working class people. The very rich will have the latest and best anti-virus software on their machines. They will be accessing the net through secure corporate networks, behind firewalls, and will rarely be exposed to problems. And if they do have a problem, they simply ring up the folks in the IT department who will come and fix it.
With help lines costing as much as £1.00 per minute here in the U.K., how often to you think working class people are going to pick up the phone and ask for help?
A very useful short article from Eric Lee pointing out that viruses, spam and all the other evil by-products of the information age are affecting working class home users. The result of this will be a serious obstacle on the expansion of broadband and use of the web outside of business and government. And if home users have these problems of course business and government will also be affected.
Here's another solution. An international public body to provide free AV software and the latest virus definitions for everyone, regardless of income. It would require relatively few staff - 100 would do it handsomely and could be funded by taxes on the superprofits of transnational corporations like the ones who provide the buggy email browser software that causes half the virus problems in the first place.
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