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My mom got conned into giving away her credit card info and allowing someone to install remote software on her PC the other week (btw I emailed Satya Nadella with my thoughts and he awesomely forwarded it to someone to look into more - my thoughts were briefly.. why do I have to travel home to fix this...).

My mom is in her 70s. People like that (a) vote (b) believe in whatever is on Facebook.

That's the risk of under-moderated social networks. Under 40 crowd + anyone on HN tbh is not the risk.



Short of not allowing people to install arbitrary software on Windows (which is what Apple does with iOS and tech people are usually upset about that) what would the CEO of Microsoft do in that regard?

The same thing happened to my grandma and my response was to remove her admin account and only let her log in as an unprivileged account. Microsoft already gives you to the tools to stop these kinds of attacks.


Totally yeah. One idea is maybe like a "library / public" mode where you can't install software very easily. My mom really just uses email, a browser and Microsoft Word.

It's a big enough issue for Microsoft that they have a dedicated page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/concern/scam

Was just encouraging other approaches to it too for that demographic.


Isn't that the same as being logged in with a user account, vs. an admin account?


If anyone is in a position to do anything about this on the Windows platform...........

It'd be the CEO.

I mean, anyone in that position is likely to be at least a bit more switched on that me, and have access to much greater resources.


And those resources would tell you "we already give you the option to create a non-admin user account, try using that".


Yes!

Imagine a group of people who accept almost any friend request they get, that think that "if it's on Facebook, that means it's real", if they ever think about it all.

A group of people who shares whatever meme they get, maybe dozens per day.

Those people exist. There are a lot of them. And they're being preyed on specifically.


People liked that believed in whatever was on TV before. Why do you think Fox News is such a big deal.


Do you really think bank fraud did not exist before the Internet?


It was so much more expensive to carry out.


Do you think contemporary telecommunications technology has given fraudsters a leg up in scale, capacity, persistence, and cost.


Gullibility by a vulnerable subset of the population shouldn't affect our decision-making for the general population. People should be responsible of their own actions and view, this is what democracy is about. Paternalistic policies numb people's wits and are a net detriment to society imo.

Ofc they can add an option for that subset. But why should it be a default? But imo if they have the right to vote and affect society they should be wise enough to not believe everythingat face value. Trying to regulate what they see does not solve the fact that their opinion is easily swayed and is poor for a democracy.


Satya is responsible for your mom now? The same thing happened to my mom, she sent tens of thousands to some scammer. Me and my family just yelled at her and explained to her the situation and how much of a moron she was. I think she learned the lesson.




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