Windows UAC Has it been useful?

bledd · 6 Sep 2012 at 18:55

I wish it was more flexible, like if you could add certain programs to a whitelist. Wouldn't mind if you had to type in your password when adding the programs to set it up.

It becomes a pain for me on my main machine so I turn it off, on the netbook and media centre I always leave it on since I never install anything or do anything besides browsing or using media.

Can't say I'd ever recommend anyone turn it off.

FoxEye · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:16

Not only do I leave it on, but I dial it up to the most secure setting

For me it's a small price to pay for the ability to run an admin account and a normal account in one. Otherwise I'd have to make a unprivileged account for normal use.

Running as admin 24/7 is rather daft, no matter who you are.

theheyes · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:17

UAC makes it more convenient to use a computer properly.

Deleted member 77746 · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:30

FoxEye said:
Not only do I leave it on, but I dial it up to the most secure setting

For me it's a small price to pay for the ability to run an admin account and a normal account in one. Otherwise I'd have to make a unprivileged account for normal use.

Running as admin 24/7 is rather daft, no matter who you are.

I'm a network administrator and I don't even run in admin. I elevate privileges as I need to.

SoundsGood · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:35

mrbell1984 said:
I'm a network administrator and I don't even run in admin. I elevate privileges as I need to.

This.

Turning UAC off is naive, any IT professional doing that as common practice needs to do some research!

JHeaton · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:36

mrbell1984 said:
Tell you what, you certainly wouldn't run 6000 networked business PC's with UAC disabled that is for sure!

K1LLSW1TCH · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:37

If you're sensible and responsible home user then the chances are you're not going to be picking up viruses, and Joe Bloggs is just going to click yes/allow at virtually everything without reading it anyway.

theheyes · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:44

UAC isn't actually a security feature, it's a convenience feature.

Deleted member 77746 · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:44

K1LLSW1TCH said:
If you're sensible and responsible home user then the chances are you're not going to be picking up viruses, and Joe Bloggs is just going to click yes/allow at virtually everything without reading it anyway.

Then this is going to cost the end user a lot of money to have repairs done. The only person to blame is that user or whoever ignores the prompts.

K1LLSW1TCH · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:51

mrbell1984 said:
Then this is going to cost the end user a lot of money to have repairs done. The only person to blame is that user or whoever ignores the prompts.

I can only speak from my own experience but I've not had a virus or anything nasty like that since using Windows 7, in fact I can't even remember being infected with anything while using Vista either. Amongst my friends the people who pick up viruses and the like are usually the people either visiting adult sites or people downloading stuff illegally. Obviously that isn't the case for everyone but amongst my friends it seems to be a common theme. I imagine that these guys would probably just allow anything that UAC flagged up, after all they want to download things from untrustworthy locations, they want to watch pr0n and they are more than happy to allow that dodgy ActiveX to run as well.

I think if people just browsed responsibly, downloaded their stuff from a trustworthy source, scanned their downloaded files before opening them and kept their software up to date then people would have far less issues. For what it's worth this thread has prompted me to turn UAC on at the highest setting, just to see what sorts of things it picks up and how often it pesters me.

james.miller · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:53

UAC pops up so infrequently for the average user. I think the people most likely to turn it off are either completely clueless OR they are serial re-installists who like to nuke and install a fresh copy of windows every other week........ because otherwise I just cant see how it's an issue for people.

Woden · 6 Sep 2012 at 22:13

james.miller said:
UAC pops up so infrequently for the average user. I think the people most likely to turn it off are either completely clueless OR they are serial re-installists who like to nuke and install a fresh copy of windows every other week........ because otherwise I just cant see how it's an issue for people.

This. In windows vista, to be fair, I was clicking something in UAC every time I did anything. Notepad? UAC. IE? UAC. Fart? UAC.

Win7 its very, very rare. At least after you install and get all your stuff on.

KIA · 6 Sep 2012 at 22:35

K1LLSW1TCH said:
I imagine that these guys would probably just allow anything that UAC flagged up, after all they want to download things from untrustworthy locations, they want to watch pr0n and they are more than happy to allow that dodgy ActiveX to run as well.

UAC has the ability to contain an infection. This makes malware cleanup so much easier. Running a web browser and other commonly targeted applications with admin privs is just nuts.

K1LLSW1TCH · 6 Sep 2012 at 22:40

KIA said:
UAC has the ability to contain an infection. This makes malware cleanup so much easier. Running a web browser and other commonly targeted applications with admin privs is just nuts.

Even if someone chooses to allow the infected programme to run when prompted by UAC if they want to run the programme or not? That's pretty cool.

theheyes · 6 Sep 2012 at 22:44

People who are expecting UAC to block malware are misunderstanding what it actually is. You can't make a reliable trust decision based simply on whether you see a UAC prompt or not.

Woden · 6 Sep 2012 at 22:45

KIA said:
UAC has the ability to contain an infection. This makes malware cleanup so much easier. Running a web browser and other commonly targeted applications with admin privs is just nuts.

See this is about education, and its something that people will pick up in time. It may just take a while.

*nix users have taken proper access control for granted, for a very long time. Having different users, with different privileges just makes sense to us. Whereas to most windows users, its seen, basically, to keep peoples files and preferences seperate.

But the average computer user is getting better at using it and generally more aware of what they do with their machines.

KIA · 6 Sep 2012 at 22:46

K1LLSW1TCH said:
Even if someone chooses to allow the infected programme to run when prompted by UAC if they want to run the programme or not? That's pretty cool.

No. The question is, does modern everyday malware need to escalate privs?

The answer, in my opinion, is probably not.

Woden said:
See this is about education, and its something that people will pick up in time. It may just take a while.

You are absolutely right. Windows users are used to the XP way of doing things (admin from the word go). They'll get used to it it eventually.