I sat down today to read MSNBC.com as I usually do every weekday morning. Basically I scan through the top headlines and then any health stories. You wouldn't believe how reading their front page Health Section has saved my butt sometimes on the reference desk when a doctor is trying to find out about a new study (not yet released of course) that was just reported on mainstream news.

Anyway the article, "Online users not safe as they think" caught my eye. I clicked on it thinking that it would be something about naive users and phishing or some simple tips I could send my to my parents who have some limited computer skills but always like to learn. Instead it was a pretty good article about how most internet users are completely naked while surfing the net. No I don't mean literally they are naked...that is a whole different set of online users that I don't want to get to involved with. What I mean is that the majority of online users have no firewall on the computer, outdated virus software, and tons of spyware hanging out and running on their computers.

The study is being released by American Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance. It found that 77% of 326 adults were assured that they were protected from online threats (viruses, hackers, and spyware). So experts visited those same homes and examined the computers. What they found is that 2 out of 3 adults were using outdate antivirus software and had no type of protective firewall program. Spyware was found on 80% of the comptuers.
According the AOL spokesman the particpants were selected as a cross section of Internet users from 22 cities and towns by an independent market analysis organization.

Obviously there is clear confusion and a general lack of knowledge regarding people's home computers and Internet threats. In the article on person explains her frustration saying, “We don’t go in funny chat rooms, I don’t open funny mail. If it says ’hot girls,’ I delete it. We do everything in the right way, so how does stuff get in there?” She complained that she thought her commerical antivirus and firewall programs would protect her from all types of online threats, when most do not detect common types of spyware.

From this article you can obviously see that this is confusing and frustrating to most online users. I am interested in knowing how it is for us a librarians. How well do you think your computers are protected? Obviously there is probably two levels here. How well are your public pcs protected and how well are the staff machines protected. One could make the hypothesis that the public pcs might have more viruses and spyware than staff computers. But is that the case? It would be interesting to find out.