It’s so dumb that Windows hides file extensions by default. They could just flip a toggle.
Comment on Threat actors exploited Windows 0-day for more than a year before Microsoft fixed it
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
The fact that Windows hasn’t solved the “fake extension” scam is wild. You can’t make people not click stuff, obviously. But you absolutely could identify double extensions clearly intended to confuse people and give some kind of “this isn’t a PDF” warning.
mememuseum@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Plopp@lemmy.world 4 months ago
But don’t you understand how confusing and scary those cryptic three letter strings are to normal people?? 😱
Cort@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Administrator Plopp, what do I do if it has a 4 letter extension? That .jpeg is a virus right?
-sincerely, The dumbest user you know
Plopp@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Oh shit. Yes. I need you to press Ctrl+Alt+Del while pulling the power cord or else the virus will steal your RAM and upload your printer to a criminal server in the cloud!
sturmblast@lemmy.world 4 months ago
It’s not the 90’s anymore. There’s no excuse for not having basic understanding of the tools you use in life.
Plopp@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Where have you been for the past decade? The trend is the exact opposite. Dumb everything down until there’s nothing left to understand, in the name of “usability”.
sturmblast@lemmy.world 4 months ago
When MS chose to hide file extensions by default I fucking lost my mind because of the malware\virus implications… idiots.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 4 months ago
They’re incompetent
lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 4 months ago
I don’t think it would help. Even without the extension it would still say:
not-malicious.pdf (Application)
We are trained to see file extensions and understand them, but the masses aren’t. There is a column that translates the hidden extension into its corresponding type already.
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
I’m suggesting an actual popup on double extensioned files that forces you to acknowledge that you know it’s lying about the file type.
The only legitimate use for multiple extensions is compression, pretty much, and it’s easy enough to distinguish those.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 4 months ago
That would be annoying for people who work on files with a double extension for legitimate reasons, e.g.
.tar.gz, and (this can’t be stressed strongly enough) Windows users do not pay attention to warning popups, so it wouldn’t actually help. Despite it being eighteen years since Windows Vista released, and therefore vanishing unlikely that any given software was written assuming that Windows didn’t have a permissions system, it’s still most people’s first troubleshooting step to try and run things as admin, and you still get loads of people (including ones who should know better, e.g. ones who also use Linux and would never log in as root) who disable UAC as one of the first things they do when setting up a windows install, and end up running everything as the equivalent of root just to suppress the mildly annoying pop-up when something asks for elevated permissions.So, your proposed popup:
- would be annoying including for legitimate uses
- wouldn’t help as anyone who already ignores the smart screen popup that shows up when running a dodgy application will ignore the new popup, too
- would be disabled by huge swathes of users anyway
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
I already addressed compression. It’s as entirely trivial to whitelist those cases as it is to do in the first place.
Again, I said it’s not magic. But most of these cases are in attention that would be reduced meaningfully if Windows made them actually pick what file type they were opening. There’s a big gap between “advanced users” who will notice that it’s the only file with an extension and morons who will just skip everything no matter what it says.
MonkderDritte@feddit.de 4 months ago
My computer-iliterate dad is on Debian XFCE since 2 years now. The first year, he thought it was the new Windows. File extensions didn’t bother him in the slightest.
lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 4 months ago
I don’t think extensions are a “bother” at all. It’s just a different way to show the info.
DaneGerous@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Wouldn’t it show not-malicious.pdf.exe?
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 4 months ago
They’re to busy finding new ways to inject telemetry and ads into your os, and degrade your experience. It takes a lot of resources to do this.