Dogberry2;361482 Wrote: > That sounds good, but it reduces the PC to being just a toy. Many people > find it very useful for making purchases, paying bills, banking, > accounting, record keeping, personal photographs and home videos, and > other functions that require things like credit card and bank account > numbers and personal information. The beauty of a modern PC is its > versatility. And of course, with that versatility comes complexity, and > also risk. So one tries to minimize the risk without giving up the > usefulness of the machine. It isn't possible to completely eliminate > the risk, but then, there's risk in everything, anyway. Never using a > PC for anything involving personal or confidential information would be > like owning a car but never driving it. You'd eliminate the risk of > dying in a car crash, but you'd also get no real use out of the > machine. So instead, one minimizes the risk of driving as much as > possible, by learning to drive safely, wearing a seat belt and so > forth. We accept the risk as the price we pay for the advantages > gained.
I agree with much of what you say, also with what Toby said. I use my PCs in all of these ways, and lose no sleep about it. For what it's worth, I use wireless encryption at home but like the locks on the door, lightweight enough to be convenient to me and only intended to keep honest people honest but not much more. I know a couple of IT security experts, and their collective advice to me was to limit STORAGE of files containing personal data on a PC's normal drives. They suggested using thumb drives with encryption for sensitive personal stuff. The rest of it, they suggested keeping browser caches empty after use, and being careful about what folders are read-enabled over a network. Laptops, even those sitting behind 63-character home network encryption keys, get stolen, get lost, or get used in Starbucks on an open network. In my mind, those risks are the ones that are more likely to happen, although with care, the consequences can be limited. -- Goodsounds ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Goodsounds's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=14201 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=55229 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
