Time to ditch Windows for online banking and shopping | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com

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October 13th, 2009

Time to ditch Windows for online banking and shopping

It’s time to ditch Windows for online banking and shopping.

There, I’ve said it.

Last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller told an audience in San Francisco how he nearly fell for a bank phishing email. As a result of this Mueller now doesn’t do any banking on line.

Then Washington Post “Security Fix” columnist Brian Krebs advises businesses not to carry out online banking on Windows-based machines and to use a Linux-based LiveCD.

I’m going one step further, and suggest that no one use Windows for either banking or online shopping. Period.

So, am I saying this to be controversial? No. Am I attacking Windows or Microsoft? Am I trying to start a flame war? No.

So why am I saying this? Simply because I believe that the risk of using Windows outweighs the convenience. Sure, the overall risk of financial loss to a consumer is small given that federal law limits the consumer’s liability to $50, but having you bank details or credit card information compromised is a huge time-consuming hassle that people can do without.

It couldn’t be simpler.

Download a Linux ISO (my favorite is Ubuntu but there are loads of others to choose from ).

Burn the ISO to CD (I recommend ImgBurn ).

Pop the CD into your drive and boot up from the CD when you want to bank or shop … take a couple of minutes and it’s 100% safe since nothing can write to the CD).

This way not only are you protected from malware ands Windows-based vulnerabilities, you also protect yourself from phishing attacks by not using the Live CD for anything other than banking and shopping (no email, no Facebook/MySpace …). You boot into the Live CD, ...

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