Dirty minds
I've always thought that the "Won't someone think of the children" brigade has the dirtiest minds around, since what kind of person makes the leap from "pornography" to "children" so quickly?
In April, the South Korean government insisted that smartphones owned by children must have software that protects the innocent little snowflakes from looking at stuff online that might harm them or steal their personal information. Now it seems sloppy programming means the cure is even more of a threat. Canadian internet …
Absolutely this.
I've shut down these "Think of the children" crusaders in many an internet forum by simply pointing out that those who shout the loudest are usually those with something to hide and are just desperately trying to publicly prove otherwise. Then the more vehemently they deny it and attack me in response, the more they prove my point!
@C.O.G. Brilliant, once after some news story I looked up the common causes of death to young people and was shocked to find the 'fiddlers didn't show in the top number, motorised vehicles and drownings did so it would more accurate to accuse someone of being a "pond owner and risk to children" or horrors of horror car driver!
It quickly occurred top me the people who needed to see reason were the ones who just would not in this lifetime, they would continue to bring their distorted mindset to exchanges regarding childhood risk. Next time someone says think of the children say "I do, I ride a bicycle!".
The irony is that Windows 98 is surprisingly secure in many ways precisely because of its obsolescence. Pretty much all modern malware requires the NT kernel libraries to run, and won't work in Windows 98 for this reason. Of course that doesn't preclude some hacker port-scanning your machine, but drive-by downloads of things like ransomware, spyware and keyloggers are largely ineffective!
That's not to say that using Windows 98 is a valid security solution of course, just an interesting side effect of using such an outdated operating system.
Why are we not surprised? Governmental agencies are the most egregiously stupid when it comes to real security. In the US, the DHS should be called the DHIS (Department of Homeland InSecurity). The NSA? How about the NISA (National InSecurity Administration)? After all, they could not prevent a gazillion top secret documents from being purloined by one Edward Snowden, though I applaud him for that!