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General discussion

Windows 98 Users Face Increased Security Risk, Says Study

Dec 10, 2003 11:49PM PST

By Peter Galli
December 11, 2003

A new research paper to be released on Thursday is warning those companies still running Microsoft Windows 98 that they face an increased risk of a network security breach when Microsoft retires the product at the end of this year.

The study, released by Ottawa-based AssetMetrix Research Labs and titled, "Usage Analysis & Risks of Obsolete Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows 95 & Windows 98," points out that while Microsoft Corp. is preparing to retire a number of its flagship products, there are still a large number of PCs in the corporate environment running Windows 98 and Windows 95.

Inventory data of more than 372,000 PCs?from some 670 companies with between 10 and 49,000 employees?found that more than 80 percent of these companies were still using Windows 98 and/or Windows 95.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1410084,00.asp

Discussion is locked

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Re:Windows 98 Users Face Increased Security Risk, Says Study
Dec 11, 2003 3:28AM PST

Hi Marianna,

I'm still running Win98 at home.

I wish someone would write an exhaustive paper on SPECIFICALLY what is LIKELY to happen (I'm talking LIKELY exploits proven to have been used in the past) to those of us at home running Win98 past the supported period with the usual complement of updated religiously anti-virus, spyware programs(Spybot S & D, Ad-aware, Spyware Guard) and Zone Alarm.

William

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William, What I'm Noticing Already...
Dec 11, 2003 7:21AM PST

Many of the major antivirus companys, and other program manufacturers as well, are stopping support for older operating systems. Windows 95 is already gone from most of the new AV programs and Windows 98 will probably soon be the same. In fact, McAfee's newest corporate Virus Scan 7 Enterprise, no longer supports Windows 95, 98, OR ME. They have an "End of Life" for June 2005, on there previous 4.5.1 version, which is still supported on Win 95, 98, and ME.

Their "retail versions still continue to support Win98, but I'm not sure for how long. NAV is much the same way. NAV 2004 doesn't support Win95, and I'm betting that Win98 won't be far behind.

If you've been keeping up with all the articles that Marianna, Donna, and others have posted here so nicely, there are more viruses, trojans, and security exploits foisted on us this year than ever be before. The security companys are just trying to stay ahead of the bad guys. So, it appears to be another "keeping up with the Jones'" situation when it comes to security software.

Hope this helps.

Grif

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Grif...
Dec 11, 2003 7:53AM PST

Grif,

Thank you for all your valuable info.

I wonder how long companies like AVG will support Win98?

William

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Probably won't officially support Win98 after MS stops support...
Dec 11, 2003 12:40PM PST

You'll probably see it dropped off the "official" support list as they can't guarantee that they can fix a problem because it might be an OS problem. They might continue to unofficially support it on Win98 until a new release uses an OS feature that breaks on Win98. There's Win95 machines out there that are still running Spybot. My neighbor has one of them. I have another. Happy

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NT Thanks Keith
Dec 12, 2003 3:49AM PST
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Yep, I Agree With Keith
Dec 12, 2003 2:27PM PST

I assume AVG will be like the other AV programs. There are still some older versions of McAfee and Norton that are still running on Win 95 and Win98. (Virus Scan 4.x and 5.x come to mind) They aren't supported any more and sooner or later the virus definitions just stop working correctly. In addition, if a reinstall is necessary, frequently a sudden update to the current defintions will trash the program. Still, for some folks, thing will work OK till a major change occurs to thier system or to the program.

Just because it says it's not "supported", doesn't mean it doesn't "work". But, the manufacturer is certainly putting the user on notice: "use at your own risk". Not always a good idea when dealing with security software.

Hope this helps.

Grif

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NT Thank you Grif, appreciate your thoughts too.
Dec 12, 2003 4:49PM PST