Kids today are so stupid they fall for security scams more often than greybeards Millennials are more likely to fall for tech support scams than baby boomers, Microsoft says. The findings are revealed in a recent Microsoft study that saw it poll peeps in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and nine other countries. Redmond's not revealed the number of respondents. Tech support scams take on …
We've mentioned this before, but just because you're super good at using mobile apps doesn't mean you have any faffing idea what's going on. It's the huge fallacy in the Digital Youth Who Will Make Great Things theory. They're consumers, not producers (except of selfies).
Unlike the Good Old Days (TM) where nothing ever worked without dinking with your autoexec.bat and config.sys (maybe I should change the IRQ on this card, hope there's no conflict?), now things mostly just work. Which means you have no idea how it works and no idea when someone's messing with you. You're just wrapped up in the warm comforting embrace of Facebook - trusssst in me...... ssslip into ssssilent sssslumber, ssssail on a sssilver missst...
So even my Mum does better than my nephews and nieces when it comes to troubleshooting and knowing when they're being scammed.
Didn't do that when you were a lad?
When I were a lad, we used SX-70 pics. Delivery was via sneakernet.
When my Grandfather were a lad, they used daguerreotypes & snail-mail.
(Note the lack of a joke icon. The above is actually true. So-called "sexting" is nothing new, except in the minds of the prudes who are upset that healthy hormones are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. I actually feel quite sorry for the prudes; they obviously never had a decent sex-life.)
I'm not a prude, but I still don't feel I had (or have) a decent sex life.
And I had to look up most other references apart from the victorian era ones (bloody hell, who was you grandfather, Methuselah?).
So called sexting may not be 'new' but is certainly easier and more convenient... meanwhile keeping a relationship going seems to increasing in the difficulty curve.
'bum' icon 'cause that's how I feel.
Don't they have a decent sex life because they are prudes, or are they prudes because they never had a decent sex life?
I can't work it out, it's too much of a chicken / egg problem...
Anyway, I must dash now. We're having the Prudes round for dinner and I must hide the Pirelli calendar.
With age comes wisdom.
Moreover, we oldies were brought up in the Golden Age of home computing, which was almost entirely about hacking (in both senses), not digital consumerism. We even had real Computer Science classes in school, unlike today's glorified secretarial courses they call "ICT".
The youff of today are purely IT consumers, with very few exceptions. They may know about, and know how to run, more of today's technologies than the older generation, but they are utterly clueless about how they actually work.
That's not to say there are no young hackers, in fact a rather prominent one is currently battling extradition (well, 31 seems comparatively young to me), but they're just a drop in a vast ocean of IT sheeple, so it isn't that surprising that they keep getting sheared.
With age comes wisdom
I think that's it. The thing about security scams is that they depend upon social engineering. Which is not a new discipline by any measure. People with more social experience tend to be better at recognizing that they are being manipulated.
"Yes, in the pre-internet age it was called a confidence trick."
And before that, back in the days of steam and Empire?
With age comes wisdom
You clearly have never spoken to my wife, but I digress :).
I think the benefit of age is that you have already made those mistakes, or have picked up warnings from others who made mistakes. The problem is that such is only partially transferrable because you need the full context before it locks in.
You call yourself an oldie - but you had computer science classes in school?
Gidoutaheah.
We had mechanical adding machines and slide rules.
When I got to college they were debating whether or not to allow use of those new fangled calculators. Gave the wealthy an advantage over the rest.
Sorry etadame
I must be about that age. Same arguments about allowing these new fangled calculating machines while I was in secondary school and we all had to use slide rules and log tables for hard sums. But we also had computer classes. With cards to send off the be run at the uni computer centre and funny pencils to mark the numbers on them. And we even had a strange little IBM machine some of us used that had to be programmed by typing numbers into memory locations.
Mechanical adding machines?
You were lucky.
I had to swim twenty miles uphill through a frozen lake to get to school every day, then spent sixteen hours chiselling my classwork onto stone tablets, and all I had to do my sums with was a banana leaf and a handful of gravel.
But you try and tell the young people today that...
Yeah, but the same way we are now talking about the youth happened to our generations, the generations before, and will happen to the generations after.
I was talking to someone who thought it was awful and incomprehensible that if I wanted to phone up a girl I fancied - which was stressful enough on its own, I had to really hope her parents didn't answer.
In 20 years time, someone youngster will find it incredible that to visit a girl he had to use the common front door, and couldn't simply beam up into her bedroom.
When I was the youngster, the generation above was shocked how we all had calculators, and "couldn't do maths properly anymore".
I'm sure a few hundred years ago, a youngster went to get a glass of water, after being to the toilet, only for the elders in the room to decry how he just takes the tap for granted, and has no idea about how the water distribution works, and the network of pumps etc - particularly for sewage removal.
Wind back to caveman days, young UG is cold, so gets closer to the fire. Elder Ug and Ug moan about how he has no clue how things went on before fire was discovered... :-)
But yeah, I've fallen into the same trap. I marvel at what is going on when I'm watching a YouTube video coming down the phone-line, transmitted to my TV over Wi-Fi, with sound sent to the speakers remotely via Bluetooth, and my remote control wireless keyboard all buzzing signals around at the same time.
But I marvel because I know what's going on, those who don't simply don't care. I've tried to describe to my nephews and nieces how when we used walkie-talkies or CB radios, when you were on the same channel, you'd have to make sure you took your turns to broadcast, and how this compares now to the multiple devices all using the same frequency "at the same time", and all I get is a shrug. I wouldn't even attempt to talk about even more intricate detail.
I've thought it would be interesting to know roughly how mpeg works so that they know what's going on when a picture appears blocky, or corruption causes a sync frame to be missed, and you sometimes get the picture of someone talking "spookingly" appear over the previous picture, mouth first etc. but they care about as much as I cared about logarithmic tables and starting cars with a crank shaft handle.
I'd say there are percentage wise today probably a similar amount of youths ( anyone under 30 odd for me ) who have a good idea of what is happening in a computer as there were when I was a youth in the 80s. It seems to take a certain mindset to be interested in technical details , and that percentage hasn't changed in a long time.
Most people are consumers of ANYTHING technical. I don't know many car owners who can do basic maintenance, let alone more major repairs.
As for being naive, 30 odd years ago I was a lot more naive than I am now . Getting older has some advantages, although I wished I could still run for a bus and not get puffed out....
So even my Mum does better than my nephews and nieces when it comes to troubleshooting and knowing when they're being scammed.
My kid has the benefit of growing up with what I do for a living. Thankfully he's gone the sport route in practically living on the sports field (cricket and rugby, depending on season), but he still knows how to hold his own online - that said, I must check again because he is still a child. He's at an age where making mistakes comes with the territory because that's part of how they learn, and as long as they learn from that and we as adults can ensure that doesn't lead them into trouble that should be OK.
It's the last part that is actually an issue, though. I can't understand how a 13 year old can formally enter into a contract that allows the pervs and data suckers in the US to start using their images for their own good. I still haven't worked that one out, as a parent I should have a say in this.
There's much in common here with a lot we older types take for granted and understand... for instance cars. How many "kids" know how to drive a stick shift? Or understand anything other than "put gas in here... put key in here.. drive off"?
There's a lot more of the things we learned the hard way that's handed to them because now "it just works" and is reasonably priced.
"There's much in common here with a lot we older types take for granted and understand... for instance cars. How many "kids" know how to drive a stick shift? "
If they have a driving license, pretty much everybody in the UK. Your almost certain to have a manual car, since your parents and friends drive manuals, your driving instructor almost certainly had a manual (unless you specifically looked for somebody with an automatic) and so you were taught on a manual.
In the UK automatics are more expensive to buy and generally use about 20% more fuel as a result of the gear selections going for low gears a lot of the time when slowly cruising around on rural roads designed for horse+cart, and paved not otherwise not noticeably improved for cars. When fuel is taxed at something like 100%, and then gets an additional 20% on top in the form of VAT then fuel efficiency is perhaps somewhat more important than it is in the states.
Drivers of automatics are statistically more likely to have accidents according to the insurers, and so attract higher insurance premiums. (you have to have insurance in the UK, it's not optional) That, and anybody driving an automatic in Europe is likely to get mercilessly mocked by pretty much everybody if they can't drive a "real" car. All this results in something over 80% of new cars sold in the UK last year being manuals.
In the UK automatics are more expensive to buy and generally use about 20% more fuel
The Honda Jazz claims to be more efficient:
Manual: 55.4 - 56.5 mpg
CVT: 57.6 - 61.4 mpg
But in my experience it's not the nuts and bolts that matters so much as the nut behind the wheel. Good acceleration sense and patience can save you more fuel than is lost through choice of transmission.
It's terribly sad to see how rare manuals are here in the states, but on the other hand, the low demand drives down the price. I was taught on automatic, my first car (an ancient Buick) was an automatic, but I got a standard once that died. I can't imagine going back, now.
- "How many "kids" know how to drive a stick shift?"
- "If they have a driving license, pretty much everybody in the UK."
It's a leftpondian thing. Nearly every car sold during the last 60-odd years having an automatic transmission, I mean.
That aside: spot on!
If you had to make it work, you learned how it works in the process, at least to some extent.
If it just works, you don't.
Both have their pros and cons - but all things considered I'm someone who likes to know.
Having said that, isn't in now sad where we live in a society where if something is this defective, instead of complaining to the manufacturer, we instead automatically expect to pay for virus protection?
I can't think of any other product we'd do that for - even out of warranty, you'd be able to argue 'fault has been there from the beginning' :-)
"Having said that, isn't in now sad where we live in a society where if something is this defective, instead of complaining to the manufacturer, we instead automatically expect to pay for virus protection?"
So you're saying that any OS that is vulnerable to viruses is defective?
Seem you would have to add MacOS X (macOS) and all the various flavors of Linux to the mix as well as iOS and Android.
Which shows that you haven't really thought through your statement, have you?
Expecting perfection from incredibly non-trivial (but nonetheless useful) systems is completely pointless. How would one even know that a product is vulnerable in the first place unless millions of units are in the wild and eventually attacked by the bad guys?
Of course, you can wait for the perfect system and opt out of the current rash of "defective" software...
"Seem you would have to add MacOS X (macOS) and all the various flavors of Linux to the mix as well as iOS and Android."
Can you buy iOS or is it "free"? Linux is free, and you get what you pay for in terms of warranty, but Windows is most definitely something you buy, even if it is pre-installed on most new computers because it's clearly available as a consumer purchase and most suppliers, if you dig into their detailed pricing, will show the price of a computer with and without Windows.
On the whole, I agree. Software seems to have a free ride in terms of consumer law.
@John Brown (no body). I don't get it. Is preinstalled iOS any different from preinstalled Windows? And if the price of a computer with Windows installed is the same or lower than without Windows, does it mean it's free or value add?
If Linux comes preinstalled on a PC and this option costs, say, $10, does it now count as a sold product or as a service?
Just because an OS can be compromised, it doesn't mean it's unfit for purpose. It can execute code, how is it supposed to tell that it was not your intention to run a particular piece of malware?
Just because an OS can be compromised, it doesn't mean it's unfit for purpose. It can execute code, how is it supposed to tell that it was not your intention to run a particular piece of malware?
You know full well that we aren't talking about a piece of code the user 'knowingly' runs as part of a confidence trick.
So you're saying that any OS that is vulnerable to viruses is defective?
Yes
Seem you would have to add MacOS X (macOS) and all the various flavors of Linux to the mix as well as iOS and Android.
If they are susceptible to virii, yes.
Which shows that you haven't really thought through your statement, have you?
No - it shows that you have low expectations, or don't actually know what a virus is.
Expecting perfection from incredibly non-trivial (but nonetheless useful) systems is completely pointless. How would one even know that a product is vulnerable in the first place unless millions of units are in the wild and eventually attacked by the bad guys?
Strawman. I never said "perfection".
Also, note that whilst I have negative rants on malware and exploits, that's not the subject we're discussing.
And with that attitude to software, please don't get a job writing software for flight navigation, traffic lights, power stations, cars, space craft, missile defence systems etc. etc. etc.
It sounds like *you* haven't thought this through - a symptom of the Microsoft generation.
Of course, you can wait for the perfect system and opt out of the current rash of "defective" software...
Thanks for your concern, but I'm there already.
Nonsense. Also, your pretentious attempt to seem more clever than you are falls flat with 'virii' - the plural is viruses, in English. In Latin, it'd be 4th Declension, and remains virus, but with different vowel values, in my opinion; the best alternative is vira, pluralizing in a way that is standard for neuter nouns. There is no true Latin plural, however, because in Classical Latin it wasn't a concept that could pluralize. At no time has 'virii' been correct, and it's generally seen used by poseurs who have discovered that some Latinate words pluralized by ending in -i but have no actual knowledge on the topic.
.... doesn't trust anybody when it comes to my computer, mobile phone or house phone. All of them have been abused as scam vectors in the past. Also, I've been reading El Reg for so long that I've turned into a misanthrope with a bunker mentality.
(Posted from the middle of the woods with a stolen mobile phone via a Tor network.)
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