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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..

Aren’t 99.9% of the people better off not rejecting the updates that repair weaknesses in their operating systems, software, and browsers when the creators of those items discover a weakness and create the update?

I’ve been updating for almost 20 years, and like the idea, and have never understood the people who go years without updates, in fact, it seems to be the problem in almost every computer that I have ever looked at.

You seem the guy to ask something that has puzzled me, for the people who don’t believe in updates, I assume they will keep using XP and IE, won’t they?