Oh yeah. I've called them the head in the sand "if it ain't broke, don't fix it crowd". Some old cliché's are still true but not this one when it comes to computers.

There's another thread here in the S.O.S forum talking about computer security, the best AV software to use and other techniques. I'm a tax pro and need to do 24 hours of continuing ed every year for my license. Every year there are courses in this because of client tax data that must be protected. I go to an annual seminar in Vegas and part of it is a talk by an IRS CID person talking about the "dark web" and investigations they've been involved in.

I'm not an expert in this area, I'm just an educated end user but here's what I'm told:

1. USE WIN10 because it's much more secure than older versions. Also, newer CPU's are more secure than older ones. I don't want to hear all the talk about how you can patch 7 or Vista or XP. If the system is online, this is what pro's in the field tell me. If you're happy with an antique 13 year old XP machine that never goes online, fine.

2. DO THE AUTOMATIC UPDATES. If it happens to occasionally mess with something you're doing just deal with it. It's not that hard.

3. NEVER use easy to hack passwords for ANYTHING. I use Avast Premier which includes their password manager. It will analyze all your passwords and give you a weak, good, strong or very strong score. Some of my very clever 10-12 character passwords I was quite proud of scored weak while others were strong. You gotta pay attention to this stuff.

4. DON'T BELIEVE that Mac's are somehow immune. The only reason they've been relatively safer than Windows is market share. The hackers go after volume but Apples market share has been growing so the hackers are paying more attention to Macs now. It's just as easy to hack the Mac OS as it is Windows.

FWIW.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.