User Account Control (UAC) on Vista – A useless feature

Yes, I said it….   UAC is the most worthless piece of code I have ever had to deal with.   Now, before you security folk start pouncing on this post as saying “But it protects you” or “This is what we all asked Microsoft for”, take note of what happens in the real world 😉

Michelle is sitting in front of her new machine.   For the past 4 days, she has been clicking the “Yes I approve” button that UAC throws up every time she does something like approve an application etc.    Next thing, an email with a nasty virus attached gets past the antivirus software because it is 1 hour out of date, and Michelle – without thinking – just clicks the “Yes I approve” button.   She sees nothing….  Then, 30 seconds later, another message comes up.   “A program is trying to format your hard drive”…    what will Michelle do?    We’ll it is obvious…  she will not read the message and will click “Yes, I approve”.   Bang….    done…

This UAC system must be ditched and rethought.    Most admins that I have spoken to disable it, I know I have on my own machine.  What is the point of that?   Do you think that my Apple iMac does this in OSX?   No…  and Apple are taking advantage of this in advertising, which is a sad thing.

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I hope that something is being done about it…   

Rant over.

Edit:
A couple of people emailed me reminding me that the user is of course doing something “of concequence” to get these prompts.    Please understand, I do get that this an effort to protect the user.   My point is that the “do you want to continue?” user effect is self harming….   average users just click yes…   always…