decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Security breach stopped | 135 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Thank You
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 27 2013 @ 05:37 PM EDT
I was beginning to think I must be the only one stupid enough to not
find out how to stop the auto-update. That's the main reason I don't
use Chrome, then I get harangued by those who think that auto-updates
will protect me from certain death.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Thank You - Authored by: kjs on Thursday, June 27 2013 @ 07:45 PM EDT
Security breach stopped
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 27 2013 @ 08:50 PM EDT

I use Ubuntu, and all updates are centralised through the package management system. This includes both security fixes and routine bug fixes or minor enhancements.

The security fixes get announced right away, by appearing on the launcher bar on the left. The launcher icon also displays how many updates are present (Unity lets programs display information in the icon). It's still my option as to when to install them, so I may delay until I want to take a break and make a cup of tea. There's usually not a lot of reason to delay though, as updates happen transparently in the background and don't normally interrupt your work.

Routine updates (e.g. bug fixes) seem to get buffered up and only announced once per week. I can check manually if I want them sooner, and if a security update comes in the routine fixes will get pulled in as well (I suppose this is necessary, as the security fix may have a dependency on an outstanding bug fix that wasn't installed yet). You can decline updates on an individual package by package basis if you don't want them.

This approach seems to work fairly well. However, since updates are still under the control of the user, the user could potentially still avoid doing any updates at all. I don't know of a cure for that which doesn't involve removing all discretion from the user.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Security breach stopped
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 27 2013 @ 11:15 PM EDT
There are ways to disable the automatic updates, though it might not be
convenient: http://dev.chromium.org/administrators/turning-off-auto-updates

One thing though, for many people I know personally, it is much better that they
do have automatic updates than not. The risk getting compromised or introduce
security issues through an automatic update are much smaller than them not
updating for months (and many times, for years), leaving them vulnerable to all
sort of issues. At any rate, if Opera's (or any other browser or operating
system vendor's) servers were compromised, there are far worst things that could
happen than just malware being automatically downloaded. Most of which are
almost impossible for common users to defend against.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )