"Nonny" <> wrote:
> Then WTF good is UAC? The OP is clearly NOT a techie!
You do not have to be a computer technician to safe guard yourself. Online
security is mostly about common sence and exercising sound judgement.
In my experience, most malware infections happen because the user breaks
pretty well-known rules, like downloading from untrustworthy sources,
opening dubious e-mail attachements, failing to scan downloads with
anti-malware, failing to run regular malware scans, not keeping OS,
programs, anti-virus and anti-spyware enabled and updated and so on.
This is not esoterics. Anybody can and should learn it.
Here is a good place to read up on the basics of online safety:
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/default.mspx
The purpose of User Account Control is to prevent the standard user, and
thereby malware the standard user attracts, from making changes to vital
parts of the OS. An administratior can of course override UAC's decisions.
Therefore it is imperative that those of us who are administrators - and
that pretty much accounts for all of us today - learn the basics of safety
and stick to the "when in doubt, don't" rule.
Charlie42