[Off Topic] Re: Linux security

[Daniel Carrera]

Lorin B Pino wrote:
> You are only as secure as the least secure contact that you trust.

True. Generally, my family and I are not very trustworthy when it comes 
to computers.

To expand on your idea (this is a tangent), there are different levels 
of trust. For example:

1. Trust a source enough to open its site in a browser.
2. Trust a source enough to download a program and run it.
3. Trust a source enough to download a program and run it as root.

At level 3 I trust the Ubuntu archives, and 1 program I wrote myself. I 
avoid installing software from universe and multiverse.

At level 2 I would include OpenOffice.org and Firefox. Yesterday I ran a 
demo of Xara Xtreme.


> If you want to be 100% secure don't connect to the net, and it
> maybe it would be best to not run any programs.

The goal is not perfect security. Nothing I do is perfectly secure. If I 
stay indoors I risk getting ill from vitamin A defficiency (you need 
sunlight to produce vitamin A). If I go out I risk a brick falling on my 
head. So you need to make a risk analysis. A computer should not expose 
you to an excessive level of risk. A non-expert user should be able to 
use a computer for regular tasks comfortably with only a very minor risk 
of virus infection. The risk of virus infection should be smaller than 
the risk of accidentally deletting a file you wanted to keep. A computer 
that can't give you that has unreasonably low security.

Cheers,
Daniel.
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