I'm not going to get into that discussion other than to say I've never had my Windows machine infected by an email. But even if it's possible, it does not refute my point that the number of spams you receive has nothing to do with the OS you use which is what you implied earlier.





That's about as convenient as a car with no doors.



You want to explain that logic to me? And do you want to explain that if I, a geek, can have a configuration error that allowed my Linux box to be rooted, how exactly Linux is going to be any more secure than Windows when used by idiots with far less computer knowledge than me?





My Linux box was compromised and used to shovel spam; it could have just as easily hopped on the net, phoned home to somewhere, and received bot instructions. They had root access but they could have just as easily done it with a non-root account since my non-root accounts also have outbound Internet access. And that's the norm even in the Linux world.

The fact that it might not be as common as compromising a Windows machine is because it's more profitable to target the OS that's on 90% of the machines out there.





1. Very few people, even in the Linux world, partition their user accounts that strictly.

2. Personal information could easily be in your Internet-using account. As more and more productivity becomes web-based, that's only going to become more an more probable.

3. Since we can assume that most viruses, etc. come from the Internet, they are going to infect your Internet accounts that have Internet access. Even if you partition your accounts so that only a single account has Internet access, all you've done is protected your personal data. Your box can still be used for botnet and spambot purposes.

4. If your box is rooted, your box is as dangerous as a Windows box.





Yeah, right. Linux never installed all the applications I needed--and installing the applications I needed that weren't included in the distribution was always something I cringed and crossed my fingers would actually work. The most important ones I needed worked. Some applications that I wanted to try failed to install or compile and I gave up.





I didn't accomplish it with a Linux box, either. I disabled outbound SMTP at the external firewall so neither Linux or Windows can send spam regardless of how they are compromised.





Right, because you've just estimated the entire installed userbase of desktop Linux. ;)

Regards,
Craig Steiner