Re:Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
by Silhouette on Monday May 15, 2017 @09:43AM
(#14341478)
Not at all. The support window for Windows 7 was advertised as going up to 2020. It should be possible to install important security updates without anything else changing as a side-effect until that time. It should also be possible to look up those updates and know what you're getting before choosing to install them, to make sure they really are security updates. That's not so much a matter of trust, it's a matter of Microsoft meeting the commitments it gave when people chose to buy its OS before, and verifying that this is happening without just taking their word for it.
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Re:Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
by emodendroket on Monday May 15, 2017 @09:44AM
(#14341484)
But if you're installing and running the security updates then you're back to trusting Microsoft. How can you verify the patches are all exactly what they purport to be?
Re:Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
by Silhouette on Monday May 15, 2017 @09:50AM
(#14341542)
Trust isn't black and white. Of course you can't 100% verify any update without personally decompiling and analysing exactly what it contains, but you can take reasonable precautions before installing them. You might be willing to trust that a security patch described as fixing a specific vulnerability such as the one we're discussing here is at least trying to do what it says if no-one has reported otherwise after a while, without being willing to trust Microsoft as a whole to push only genuine security updates without supervision.