@ancientprogrammer
This article is great. Its only hit the nail slightly on the head though as ancientprogrammer has pointed out because there are many situations where its not necessarily the old folk with these kinds of hair raising stories. Much like ancientprogrammer's parents, my elderly fathers online practices are pretty good, but I in fact have had plenty of opportunities to see people of all ages who have abysmal online practices.
I recently found one of my cousins who only seldom goes online, hadn't updated his computer in about 4-5 years, was working with IE6 and his AV had shut down for being so seriously out of date. He is 50. And is a relatively bright person and should have known better. Only the lucky fact that his online footprint is about the size of half the head of a pin kept his machine out of trouble.
I see people of all ages all over the place who expect about the same kind of service out of their computer as they would an automobile. They expect to start it up, and if it starts, they then expect to simply take off and forget completely about whats going on under the hood. They have about as much concern for the other traffic on the internet as they do about traffic on the road, that might sound OK, but think about it, on the road you do NOT expect others to be out on the road thinking about what kind of damage they can do to you, and on the internet there are plenty that are trying to do you some damage and it requires thinking about that aspect as you travel around. There is plenty I see happen on a road that people would never ever do if you had the problem where there were really other drivers out there looking to slam you.
People in general are not IT savvy. I see many things discussed and talked about, things revealed, and things predicted on ZDNet that so so many of the general public know nothing about; and many could care less about. Yet interestingly enough, all to often the article, or comments following it appear to be based on some kind of thinking that wants to include, or apply to the public in general, yet most of the public either doesn't have a clue, or doesn't behave or think in the expressed manner at all.
David Gewirtz has made a fine article here because so many things are too often written around here seemingly without a clue what its really like out there with Joe Average/man on the street. Remember, people who are working in the field of IT, or who are simply quite IT savvy will over a period of time often make many of those closest around them more IT savvy, so even thinking about their own experiences with those close to them often will not paint an accurate picture of what Joe Average is really like for people who are IT savvy and write here.
When you really talk to people who have no real interest in technology, and there are millions of them everywhere, they don't give much of a damn about the newest version of Android, they could care less about when Windows 8 is coming out, and they have a very poor clue about the extent of the online risks that exist. They think people who put any meaningful time into such discussions are geeks.
When really looking at the massive segment of the public that hat very little interest in IT, beyond the fact that when they turn on their smartphone/computer/tablet that it works. When making statements about what the public thinks, how they will react, what they want, a much much better understanding of the huge segment of the population that those who are IT savvy seldom have lots of contact with is needed. And I seriously expect thats why the general tone of this article by Gewirtz is one of some amount of shock. It shouldn't have been even a little bit shocking because its so common place once you get a little distance away from the IT savvy crowd and those they frequently do have contact with.
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