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Does this product contravene UK consumer protection legislation?

Oldwilliam
This seems to be a very useful software tool for patching/warning the home user about vulnerabilities and about malware such as trojans, but as it's labelled as an "anti-virus" product, and no-one has ever yet demonstrated the existence of a virus for a *nix-based operating system (or else they would have claimed the substantial prize offered for many years by Netproject for infecting a properly-configured Linux box with a virus!), does this product breach UK consumer protection legislation? It certainly claims, by implication, that *nix viruses exist, the truth of which Sophos would have to demonstrate publicly (e.g. to the Advertising Standards Authority) if a complaint was made.
:1000073


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    Although I'm known for giving my two (€)cents quite often and this is a tempting thread I resisted for a long time. I have to chime in not only to find out what this topic is really about but also to comment on some - what I think are - inaccuratenesses.

    I still wonder whether this subject is really about what it says i.e. discussing the legality of Sophos' advertisements or product descriptions, an eye-catcher for praising the superiority of *nix over Windows or kind of vengeance for Microsoft's "marketing practices".

    Let's keep the lawyers (especially those from the U.S.) out of here. :smileywink:

    Although many of the arguments are sound the line of argument is a clutter.

    The security models of *nix and Windows NT are not that different and the latter is a multi user system and not to be confused with the "MS-DOS" branch.

    A model is one thing, an implementation another and the there are programming environments, additional components and applications to name a few aspects which are nowadays (more or less incorrectly) subsumed under the name of an OS. From such a view you can say that Windows is a single-user consumer product.

    I agree that Windows (in the above denotation) is by far less secure than Linux or Mac OS X. But not because of the security model or the kernel itself. It's the stuff that was piled upon it and the so-called functionality and user-experience that was deemed necessary and implemented undermining most of the security concepts (in it's early days TCP did the same to *nix, BTW). From a practical view it doesn't matter much whether the OS or something atop of it is infected. Just why do we have things like Little Snitch?

    What are these mechanisms for self-replication which exist in a "properly configured and used" Windows system but not in other OSs? It doesn't take much to Linux security more Windows-like-"user-friendly" - it is possible. Fortunately it isn't done. 

    Last but not least - a vulnerability (not an implementation bug) means that the security can be non-deliberately (by the victim, not the attacker of course) subverted. It is no surprise that those exist in complex systems - the point is they are here. Whether they are exploited is more a question of economics - why bother to take over the few Macs? :smileywink:

    Christian

    :1001047
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  • 0

    Although I'm known for giving my two (€)cents quite often and this is a tempting thread I resisted for a long time. I have to chime in not only to find out what this topic is really about but also to comment on some - what I think are - inaccuratenesses.

    I still wonder whether this subject is really about what it says i.e. discussing the legality of Sophos' advertisements or product descriptions, an eye-catcher for praising the superiority of *nix over Windows or kind of vengeance for Microsoft's "marketing practices".

    Let's keep the lawyers (especially those from the U.S.) out of here. :smileywink:

    Although many of the arguments are sound the line of argument is a clutter.

    The security models of *nix and Windows NT are not that different and the latter is a multi user system and not to be confused with the "MS-DOS" branch.

    A model is one thing, an implementation another and the there are programming environments, additional components and applications to name a few aspects which are nowadays (more or less incorrectly) subsumed under the name of an OS. From such a view you can say that Windows is a single-user consumer product.

    I agree that Windows (in the above denotation) is by far less secure than Linux or Mac OS X. But not because of the security model or the kernel itself. It's the stuff that was piled upon it and the so-called functionality and user-experience that was deemed necessary and implemented undermining most of the security concepts (in it's early days TCP did the same to *nix, BTW). From a practical view it doesn't matter much whether the OS or something atop of it is infected. Just why do we have things like Little Snitch?

    What are these mechanisms for self-replication which exist in a "properly configured and used" Windows system but not in other OSs? It doesn't take much to Linux security more Windows-like-"user-friendly" - it is possible. Fortunately it isn't done. 

    Last but not least - a vulnerability (not an implementation bug) means that the security can be non-deliberately (by the victim, not the attacker of course) subverted. It is no surprise that those exist in complex systems - the point is they are here. Whether they are exploited is more a question of economics - why bother to take over the few Macs? :smileywink:

    Christian

    :1001047
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