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Everyone Wants to 'Own' Your PC
How much control do you really have over what happens on your machine?
The author, Bruce Schneier, is the CTO of Counterpane Internet Security. A few exerpts:
Internet Explorer users might have expected the program to incorporate easy-to-use cookie handling and pop-up blockers. After all, other browsers do, and users have found them useful in defending against internet annoyances. But Microsoft isn't just selling software to you; it sells internet advertising as well. It isn't in the company's best interest to offer users features that would adversely affect its business partners.
You might have expected your antivirus software to detect Sony's dangerous rootkit. After all, that's why you bought it. But initially, the security programs sold by Symantec and others did not detect it, because Sony had asked them not to.
The firewall in Microsoft Vista (the next version of Windows) will ship with half its protections turned off. Microsoft claims that large enterprise users demanded this default configuration, but that makes no sense. It's far more likely that Microsoft just doesn't want adware -- and DRM spyware -- blocked by default.
