It's like the Outlook version of autorun. I am not famaliar with email scripting, but I though Javascript does not allow accessing local filesystems. Ah, unless it's ActiveX. Why is opening email giving it permission to run whatever's in the mail? By that logic, when opening a Word document, you can expect it to format your harddrive?To get a virus on Windows you must give permission for a file to run, download, etc. Opening an email that has a script in it is pretty much giving it permission. Even then Outlook will warn you and allow you to not allow the script to run. IE also has this feature where you can block scripts from running. And the beautiful thing about autorun is you can shut it off completely from the control panel. I personally have never experienced any issues with autorun and certainly would not put the blame on it for a virus entering my system.
Sure, you can disable autorun. But how would a Windows "newbie" like me know? Why not make it default to disabled? Ah, user friendliness, of course. How amazed would the user be when he inserts a usb drive and everything runs automatically?
In Linux, I can confidently insert a USB stick from an unknown source containing whatever there is, and navigate in it, knowing that nothing will be run until I explicitly issue a command to run a binary or script on the drive.Again we are stuck on this autorun thing. Autorun has nothing to do with the problem. Autorun only runs when a .inf is present meaning you either installed the program in question, copied it piecemeal to your USB drive, or you inserted a CD/DVD.
Sure, I am blaming the OS. It just seems that you need to know a lot more about Windows to make it secure than you need to know about Linux to make it secure.So in the end if you have a virus it's your fault. Blaming the OS won't help matters and it won't help you rid yourself of bad habits that allowed the virus in. Just take it as a learning experience and stop trying to blame the OS.
Well, if autorun is not the default on a freshly installed XP, I wouldn't have that virus . It's a problem in the OS's design.You certainly have not produced any evidence to support your claims that it is the OS's fault you have a virus.