Earthlink installs Microsoft networking

Not to be bashing Sky Daton’s prodigy here, but installation of Earthlink software nowadays will re-install, if neccessary, Microsoft networking components onto your Windows computer that you have attached to the Internet, putting your computer in the security position of leaving the front door of your house wide open.

Earthlink should know better than to follow in the footsteps of AOL on this security issue.

For example, ZDNet says this of Windows computers on the Internet:

Unpatched PCs won’t last 20 minutes.

— and:

The drop from 40 minutes to 20 minutes is worrisome because it means the average “survival time” is not long enough for a user to download the very patches that would protect a PC from Internet threats.

Link here.

Now calculate in that the Internet Storm Center today (and usually) states that TCP port 445 (Microsoft Windows Directory Services ‘communications channel’) accounts for the highest number of attack instances on the Internet.
Link here.

By the time you’ve installed your Earthlink software, setup your Earthlink connetion, and then tried to update your Windows system you’ve been had many times over, yet Earthlink is joining AOL in insisting that Microsoft Windows networking be installed on their users computers.

Sky, I know it’s not in your hands anymore, but your baby’s mental processes are lacking in sanity…