Strategic insights
Security is the Biggest Threat to Security

Security are ruining our life. It is terrorizing user experience making "computing" less and less desirable. I think that instead of waging a "war on terror", we should wage a "war on security".

And no, I do not mean a war against viruses, spyware, and hackers - but a war against the security applications - like McAfee, Symantec or Windows Vista's user account control.

The problem is that these programs constantly tell me that they have done their job, or that something that is perfectly safe might not be. I do not want to know about that.

if I am driving in my car, I do not want to be pulled over by the police just to be told that "the traffic lights ahead has been updated. Now it - still - works". WTH?

If I decide to walk across the street I do not want a window to pop-up saying " Crossing streets are potentially dangerous, do you want to continue?" - I know that, but I made the decision, it is my life - dammit!!! Get the hell out of my way and bother somebody else instead.

But, if somebody suddenly pushes me into a street, I do want see a pop-up saying "You are about to get killed, would you like to stop now?" - YES, please - now!!!

I only want to see my security when I am in danger - not when I am perfectly safe.

Security got it backward

A couple years ago, one my domains was hacked. There was no real damage. the front page had "only" been defaced, so instead of a nice image, there was a message: "we 0wn your b0x".

In terms of security it obviously didn't work, but that was not the worst part. The worst part was that none of the server logs reported any problems.

It is the same with anti-virus. If a virus is detected in an email, it will pop-up saying "We found a virus, and removed it". But, it will not tell if it did not find a virus, and your computer has become infected.

...or what about this. After updating McAfee it suddenly started showing me these every time I send an email:

What kind of bullshit is that?

Fix your damn security applications. Make me secure and only trouble me when you cannot. Wasting people's time is should be a crime!