Hmm... let's see, 'Some program is attempting to change your Windows settings: do you want to allow this?'

What do you think, folks, should I say yes or no?

Honestly, I didn't know how good I had it during the last decade when I was surfing the Web on Apple computers. Ever since I switched to a PC a month ago, I've been bombarded with potentially catastrophic security threats from sources unknown.



I never experienced such security threats on an Apple computer.

I feel like a gazelle who has been evicted from the safety of the New York Public Zoo and returned to the harum-scarum of the African bush.



Suddenly I'm back in the crosshairs of every scam artist in the world.

Brian, I'd like you to meet Ngobe Ngogo, Executive (ahem!) "Chairman" of the Nigerian World Bank.

- Yes, I believe we've met, 10 years ago, in fact, when I was still using an IBM PC to surf online.

Of course, my new Samsung notebook came with a year's supply of anti-virus protection from a program called Trend Micro...

but that's no longer as reassuring to me as it originally sounded when put forward as a selling point by the smooth-talking Best Buy salesman who fobbed this thousand-dollar security nightmare off on me in the first place.

The very first night that I took this baby out for a spin on the World Wide Web, I received a half-dozen vaguely worded pop-up messages from that software warning me that various sites were attempting (don't ask them how) to change my Windows settings and did I want to allow them to do so.

Seriously: That's all the information that the much ballyhooed anti-virus software could give me. They couldn't even tell me WHO was trying to muck about with my Window settings, only that somebody somewhere was apparently trying to get their mitts on them. I could only deduce the likely identity of the culprit by considering which sites I had loaded in my browser just prior to the appearance of each of these ominous messages.

And I'm like...

How the hell do I make an informed decision about whether to allow such potentially dangerous changes based on so little information?

No doubt you veteran Windows users are used to such threats and can take them with a grain of cyber-salt, but these vague dangers are unsettling to a spoiled Apple user such as myself.

In fact, the whole online experience seems more hostile now that I'm surfing again with a Windows-based computer.

Even Google is suddenly out to get me. In the good old days, when I was surfing the Web on my iBook G4, Google would at least wait until I had accessed their site before they'd overtly pester me with questions and suggestions about my online surfing habits.

Ever since I began using the Samsung, there's been a headline-sized blurb from Google at the top of my frickin' Firefox browser telling me, quote, that Google would like to "access my location" and share it with the rest of the world. Would that be okay with me?

Can you believe it?

And I'm like, of all the nerve!

NO, I do NOT want you to access my location and share it with the rest of the world, Google! For goodness' sake!

The fact that Google can even ask such a question with a straight face, so to speak, suggests that the expectation of personal privacy in the Windows world has sunk to an all-time low during the decade that I've been living uptown in my Ivory Tower on Apple Street.

But I digress. Remind me to trash the erosion of online privacy in a future gig. (What are you guys doing next Sunday?) Today, I'm throwing down on the subject of the online insecurity that I feel after switching from an Apple computer back to a Windows PC.

Incidentally, I'll give you three guesses as to why I made the switch in the first place -- I mean, beyond the fact that my ancient 5-year-old iBook bit the dust back in April 2010. (Memorial services were held last Tuesday night at TGIF Friday's.)

The answer, of course, is money, money, money.

I mean, the jean-clad geniuses in those antiseptic Apple stores are chummy enough (Hi, can they help you? What can they "do ya for" today?) but let's face it, folks: They don't want anything to do with you, at least from a salesperson point of view, until you're ready to sink at least 1,500 clams into their latest-and-greatest -- and that's before you tack on the added ram that you're soon going to realize that you can't live without, not to mention the customer support package that gives you that potentially crucial two years' worth of technical service via telephone --

When I toted up all these bells and whistles, I discovered to my unbounded horror that even a basic-model Apple computer in the year 2010 costs, generally speaking, a good thousand dollars more than a top-of-the-line P.C.

Well, let me tell you: I took one look at that price tag and I shouted "bah humbug!" -- I kid you not -- right out loud in the stuffy Apple Store in Clarendon (I guess I told THEM off) and, with nose in air, I proceeded to tool down to the Best Buy in Columbia Pike to shop among the hoi polloi for a change, among the great unwashed who aren't too proud to buy an everyday Windows-compatible computer, thank you very much, indeed. (Hmm! I can be just as democratic as the next guy, notwithstanding my admittedly somewhat rarefied sensibilities on the artistic front, ahem ahem...)

But now that I've actually made the switch from bourgeois Apple to proletariat Windows...


I feel like some spoiled Rebecca who's just been kicked off of Sunnybrook Farm and forced to make her own way in the big city.

Yep, my crusty old aunts have finally had enough of my carefree shenaningans in the chicken coop (fancy, singing to the little 'chickees' like that as I call them!) I can hear Aunt Miriam now: Enjoy your bargain-basement freedom while you can, little missy -- but don't come crying to me when some ostensible Nigerian bankers convince you to wire your life savings to the First National Bank of Eritrea!

Well, I feel like I'm Rebecca's brother, at any rate: what's-his-name, Robbie of SunnyBrook Farms. Or maybe I'm Andy of Green Gables?

Oops, I'd better run, folks: I just got another warning message. Some unidentified knucklehead is trying to change my Windows settings again.

I tell you what, I'm having second thoughts about the propriety of stinting on the additional 500 bucks that it would have cost me to buy a new Apple computer. You guys in the Windows world live dangerous lives!

I'm a gazelle, I tell ya -- a regular Thomson's gazelle, complete with antlers, even -- and the online jackals are on my scent!

Hello, operator: Give me the New York Public Zoo: escaped game division. Yes, this is an emergency!