3 Common Mistakes That Ordinary Computer Users Make In Terms of Security and Privacy in a Networked World.

To me internet has positively impact individuals, businesses and public sector since its invention but it has also brought evil impact most caused by crackers either for show of supremacy, economic gain or for distortion of flows.

The reasons why most of computer users fall victim of crackers circumstances are discussed below:

Low Priority on Privacy and Security of Computers

Computer users are usually excited when they get a computer system that is "up and running" for them in terms of hardware, software and connection to internet(network) without taking into account the security and privacy of the system. Example is the case of Bill McBuff and Tiger Leap Program of Estonia.

(https://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Security_and_Privacy_in_a_Networked_World/PIBKAC)

.In both cases cases they dealt only with hardware & software dealers and network providers without seeing security and privacy as priority and they ended up not having palatable experience as users.

Hackers came initially with the intention of playing pranks for fun, example was the use of Netbus software written by hacker and a Swedish programmer Carl-Fredrik Neikter in early  1998 with the aim of remote administration but Netbus was used by crackers to plant child pornography on the work computer of a law scholar at Lund University in 1999 and he lost his research position to this case.

In the cases cited above, training on security and privacy of computer users might have saved the mess. Pre-installation of anti-virus also would have been proper as most anti-virus programs prevent,detect and remove Netbus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBus

Underestimation of Economic  Importance of Malware

Some malwares are used directly or indirectly to make millions of dollars daily by sending spam and scam schemes,  DDoS attacks, also used in cyber war and political attacks.

A company like Damballa has creativity made a fortune from the threats in the networked world. See 

http://blog.damballa.com/?p=330) for details.

Many individuals, businesses and even governments have got their fingers burnt to malware attack(s).

A typical example was the Estonia`s cyber attack of 2007 which affected government and corporate companies most especially banks. This was believed by some security experts as DDoS attack, though it was reported to have minimal economic impact but at the same time was a wake up call for Estonia on cyber security. 

Georgia and Kyrgyzstan were victims also in 2008 and 2009 respectively, the response and the economic impact was more than that of Estonia.

Addiction to Less Secured Browsers and Passwords

This is also  one of the common mistakes made by computer users,  a typical case is illustrated in Microsoft Mono culture in Korea where window browser(internet explorer) with active X and this led  to a massive internet attack of 80,000 Korean crippled  in July 2014. It was pointed out in http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2009/09/123_52401.html that active X provided easy route for cyber criminals spreading Malware for DDoS attacks and the reasonable solution is upgrade of security software since Koreans are addicted to MS.

Using weak passwords for protection of computers is one of the Windows generation problems, this was attributed to early Microsoft windows 95 and being one user systems without passwords later window 2000, and XP offered better password system but users were already addicted to Windows 95 and 98.

In summary, though there is no 100% security anywhere the do`s and don'ts highlighted by CERT(http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/home_networks.html) is a preventive tools for computer users.

Using the words of Confucius, "Education breeds confidence, confidence breeds hope and hope breeds peace", for peace or something related to peace in a networked world, security and privacy education  and training is a great tool for computer users.