Perhaps Microsoft's marketplace dominance has something to do with it. A convicted monopolist can pretty much tell its customers what it wants. None of this leaves users off the hook. We lock the doors to our houses when we leave for work and lock our cars when we park at the store. Yet we tend to be casual about computer security.
Few companies require employees to encrypt e-mail.
And social engineering, the art of extracting secret information in a phone call from a person pretending to have a right to that information, is rampant. Vendors need to work harder to plug their leaks. IT needs to give users the training and tools to be safer. And everyone needs to care more. Dan Gillmor is technology columnist at the San Jose Mercury News.