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Updating software to ensure it remains secure is ok, but, here's the concept that might be getting lost. I want to make the changes myself by loading the updates, I don't want someone else doing it for me without my knowledge.

It's the same thing with Microsoft Updates. I don't want Microsoft automatically updating my software. Consider the following:

1). If I allowed them to do that, I'd have a Bing desktop right now with a Bing toolbar in my web browsers. I don't want Bing software on my computer. Using the search engine is as far as I want to go with Bing.

2). I don't have IE11. If allowed Microsoft to install that automatically, I'd have to uninstall it because the Air Force Outlook Web Access Email system doesn't play well with IE11. So I have to stay with IE8 until someone in the government gets their act together and figures out how to make it work.

So as you can see from those two small examples, not all updates are beneficial. Overall, I WANT CONTROL OF MY COMPUTER, not some faceless individual or corporation. It's a choice, a preference.

Don’t browsers have to update to remain secure?

Doesn’t Microsoft have to update to remain secure?

Software updates can include changes to configuration.

Say you came across a nasty vulnerability, before anything happened, but you read up on it, and, according to solutions you found, you turned off this or that, or set some Windoze registry entries to certain values, etc., as part of plugging the security hole.

An update could change that back on you and you'd never know unless you checked it.

Perhaps the new software that was installed with the update has new configuration options: checkboxes, settings, that tell the software do this, don't do that. The default settings are often huge security holes. Update installs, a short time later, bingo, a hacker is in your computer exploiting the new way to break into your machine.

In theory, as soon as M$ or mozilla or whoever receives a report of a vulnerability in their software, they work on a solution, then push it out as updates. But it's the time from when the hackers find it....................... all the way until the "fix" gets pushed to your machine, that you're sitting there defenseless.

The conservative way is spend the effort to find out how to get your machine locked down (secure), then leave it alone.

Most Windoze (and smartphone) users don't do that. Most users don't know about much of their configuration at all, they just install software with the "wizard", taking all the defaults, keep clicking ok. They never look at what windows services they have running or how they are configured, they don't look much at the network settings or understand them much, same with IE, email, etc. It's all far too complex, really, and mostly always the way software is designed and installed with all defaults, it's very insecure..