Samsung inexplicably disables Windows Update on their laptops through silent tool

[wiyosaya]

Well said. People who deliberately don't enable automatic system patching are the reason we have so many successful, high impact virus and malware outbreaks. If they don't mind their personal information being stolen, go right ahead. I however put faith in my operating system's authors being on top of keeping my machine as secure as a machine not unplugged and 6 foot under in a titanium vault can be.

And so you are an expert on threats I see.

In the 25+ years I have been building my own machines, I never had automatic Windows Update enabled, nor have I ever, not even one time in that time period in case there is a lack of understanding the word "never", gotten a virus. I pick and choose my updates, I have an isolated lan behind a stealth firewall, I don't visit sites that have hidden payloads, and I disable all software extras when I do download. I know how to recognize scam / payload e-mail. Until a few years ago, I never ran AV software either. Now that I do, I have never once had it tell me it caught a virus.

From my experience, it is people who are absolutely clueless and do things just because they can that get all kinds of malware because they install all kinds of crap just because they can. My father-in-law is just such an example. I spent four-hours one day cleaning his machine manually - yes, that means registry and all - manually - because he has no clue about what malware is and just decides something along the lines of "oh, this looks cool, so I'll install it." Then he asked me if that happens to me. My simple answer to him was NO because I don't install all the crap you do.

As I see it, it is very difficult for anyone who really knows what they are doing to have their machine compromised by any of these holes that are constantly patched.

When I first started building my own PCs, updates were notoriously unreliable and usually always broke something, and that is why I started not automatically updating. Updates have gotten better over the years, but I will say it again, it is pretty difficult for those who are knowledgeable to get any sort of crap on their machine. At this point, I have one machine out of eight that I have automatic updates enabled, but I am questioning why.

 

[cliffordcooley]

People who deliberately don't enable automatic system patching are the reason we have so many successful, high impact virus and malware outbreaks.

And you are wrong. I do turn off auto updating. I do install all updates. And it has been years since my last virus, which I figured I was going to get before ever getting it. Patching a system has nothing to do with peoples ignorance of contaminating their own system.

 

[LNCPapa]

So this might be working for some of you - but disabling the service altogether is a horrible idea to pass off as how people should do things. The average user has no idea what an update does or even why they would need it. If it was working great yesterday why wouldn't it work great tomorrow? All you have to do is go through the CEH courses to see that it's an ever moving target that you have to constantly defend against. It's much easier to compromise a machine than one might think and the average user doesn't have the time to get educated in this area enough to be able to spot them. People who don't work in the area of IT simply want the computer to work - and one of the easiest ways to make sure your machine works 99.9% of the time is to keep your OS updated/patched.