Who’s Responsible for Protecting Your PC?

“Gates Fiddles as PCs Crash and Burn,” by Rivka Tadjer (Commentary, Feb. 10), on holding Microsoft responsible for damage from virus attacks because the Windows operating system is porous to external entry, is right on. The Windows operating system should be fire-walled from applications and data in personal computers such that a dialogue box asks you to confirm any changes in the operating system before they are made. This would prevent any outside entrant from sneaking into your operating system through surreptitious paths and defiling it.

Microsoft should be held responsible for the billions of dollars of damage caused by its operating system.

Donald Rapp

South Pasadena

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Tadjer is right that using “checksums” would help with virus problems, but most viruses these days don’t simply invade programs and modify their functions. As information technology has progressed, viruses take many forms that cannot be protected by checksums: small programs and macros, to name two. The leading anti-virus software vendors provide products that adapt quickly to each new threat and automatically update themselves to stay current. Microsoft or any other operating system vendors can’t reasonably be expected to keep adjusting their software on a continuing basis, as the dynamics of the problem change.

Besides, if Microsoft announced inclusion of anti-virus software in Windows, it would have the same antitrust legal problems it faced with its Internet Explorer efforts.

Michael Wolfstone

Monterey Park