Blaming the victim

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Technology
August 27th, 2003 • 10:00 pm

Salon has a look at the virus/worm vulnerabilities of Windows in an article titled “Dumb software for dumb people“. I don’t think using such a title will help much. It effectively echoes Microsoft’s own approach, which is to constantly blame the end user for software issues.

But at least the article itself offers a more balanced view:

[S]ome experts aren’t satisfied with Microsoft’s efforts. That’s called blaming the victim, says Richard Smith, the security researcher who helped lead police to the coder behind the Melissa virus. It’s like that old saying, ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ — in the case of some of the latest worms, Smith says, you can tell that Microsoft didn’t put much effort toward prevention.


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