6 ms·

Sounds like exactly what UAC did in Vista. It prompted so much that people either turned it off, or just blindly hit OK. Subsequent versions toned down the aler

Sounds like exactly what UAC did in Vista. It prompted so much that people either turned it off, or just blindly hit OK. Subsequent versions toned down the alerts to what we have now in Win10. Making it a hardware switch doesn't change the fact that the average user will just quickly learn to flip the switch anytime something doesn't work quite right and we are right back where we started. The average user is never going to be protected by something they can switch on and off at will. They will never understand the complexity around when it is OK to switch it off.

ChuckMcM 9y ago
How is two or three times a year like UAC?
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  If you want to declare program files and system settings unprotected along with the user files, you could just continue to use UAC and make it only trigger two or three times a year. It'll protect you about as well as the switch, which is very little.
- sbierwagen 9y ago
  It seems like there's a spectrum of outcomes here. As a user, I don't particularly care about system files, I care about the state of the system. In fact, if all this does is protect system files, then a ransomware attack would just wipe out all my user files and revert the machine back to a fresh install-- an identical outcome to if I just reformatted the drive and reinstalled Windows. Not helpful! Really, this scheme needs to include the entire contents of the drive-- "freezing" the restore points Windows makes automatically. Now the tradeoff is how often you annoy the user/how fresh the backups will be. Once a year is obviously too infrequent, once a second is too often. Once a week, or month. Maybe do it at the same time as Windows does a system update, as you suggest. You don't need fancy hardware support for this, just a NAS backup box with a client that doesn't let you erase older snapshots.
- SimonPStevens 9y ago
  Sorry, I didn't explain well. I wasn't really making a point about the frequency. The point I meant to make was that anything the user learns has to be switched to continue proper functioning won't protect them, because they will just switch it when the malware requests it too. Which is exactly what has happened with UAC.
viraptor 9y ago
The constant uac notification wasn't a windows thing as much as apps. While windows itself was more or less reasonable with the warnings, lots of apps assumed it's still xp (or just haven't been updated) and they can do whatever, wherever.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

How is two or three times a year like UAC?

Dylan16807 9y ago
If you want to declare program files and system settings unprotected along with the user files, you could just continue to use UAC and make it only trigger two or three times a year. It'll protect you about as well as the switch, which is very little.
sbierwagen 9y ago
It seems like there's a spectrum of outcomes here. As a user, I don't particularly care about system files, I care about the state of the system. In fact, if all this does is protect system files, then a ransomware attack would just wipe out all my user files and revert the machine back to a fresh install-- an identical outcome to if I just reformatted the drive and reinstalled Windows. Not helpful! Really, this scheme needs to include the entire contents of the drive-- "freezing" the restore points Windows makes automatically. Now the tradeoff is how often you annoy the user/how fresh the backups will be. Once a year is obviously too infrequent, once a second is too often. Once a week, or month. Maybe do it at the same time as Windows does a system update, as you suggest. You don't need fancy hardware support for this, just a NAS backup box with a client that doesn't let you erase older snapshots.
SimonPStevens 9y ago
Sorry, I didn't explain well. I wasn't really making a point about the frequency. The point I meant to make was that anything the user learns has to be switched to continue proper functioning won't protect them, because they will just switch it when the malware requests it too. Which is exactly what has happened with UAC.

viraptor 9y ago

The constant uac notification wasn't a windows thing as much as apps. While windows itself was more or less reasonable with the warnings, lots of apps assumed it's still xp (or just haven't been updated) and they can do whatever, wherever.