This has to be one of the worst, most FUD-filled articles I have seen yet on cyber security.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/06/03/ways-your-home-susceptible-hackers-cybersecurity/

In the article, many vulnerabilities and threats are discussed, but the article fails to lay out any sense of real risk based on probability or likely damages. In other words, here is a bunch of the over the top crap to scare you about using technology.

I think this kind of stuff is exactly why consumers have grown palliative to security threats and keeping their machines patched. The media loves to whip the fear and hype on them routinely, yet common sense tells us innately that the sky can’t always be falling, or it would have fallen by now. Humans are incapable of existing at high levels of threat sensory overload for long periods of time. We just weren’t wired for it. Our sense of risk becomes irrational with too frequent and infrequent use.

Please, talk to people who ask about this stuff with a well-placed sense of risk. Explain that security issues exist in a variety of platforms, but the average person needs not fear every security problem. They need to base their decisions and actions on real world probability and damage calculations and NOT on hype by vendors, the media or interested parties.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not too worried about someone HERFing my stereo. It would work, likely, but the odds of someone caring enough to do it, having access and capability, seem pretty small. I’m not planning on tempesting the house any time soon, and neither should you.