# Which operating systems tend to be most vulnerable to ransomware attacks?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-operating-systems-tend-to-be-most-vulnerable-to-ransomware-attacks/943670>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 5, 2021, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-operating-systems-tend-to-be-most-vulnerable-to-ransomware-attacks/943670 "2021-06-05T11:27:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-operating-systems-tend-to-be-most-vulnerable-to-ransomware-attacks/943670/21 "2021-06-13T20:22:38Z")

</div>

> [@ParallelLines](#):
>
> For a home user, you may end up buying a new PC before your OS goes out of support, but a lot of companies who are paying huge amounts of $$$ for licenses will put it off to the last moment (or after). And/or they have personalized software that is only compatible with an obsolete OS, so they keep running it on machines that may or may not be outward facing, and then . . .

> [@echoreply](#):
>
> Yes, just clicking on the link, combined with the resistance many places, and among many users, to install updates[…]
> 
> Security takes continuous input of time, energy, and money. This will inconvenience people who are just trying to do their job, it will sometimes break things, and (the dreaded) make things look different.

> [@FinsToTheLeft](#):
>
> And we’ve had threads about this many times: “I still want to run Windows ME but my banking web site wants something newer than IE 6”. Regardless of the haranguing from the IT pros of the Dope, people don’t want to upgrade because reasons. They don’t want to download patches, they don’t want to wait for a reboot.

Yeah, unfortunately both individual human nature and corporate cultural nature lean hard in the direction of _“why keep changing everything? what good is a “fix” to the system that breaks the main program/app/path we use for our job? how come we have to lose half a workday restarting and rebooting everything? wait, so this new OS will regularly “phone home” w/o asking me for permission and tell them what I’ve been doing???”_ The notion that these inconveniences (and in some cases, actual short term losses such as when the new OS no longer plays nice with the application) are worth it is sometimes hard to drive home.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2021, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-operating-systems-tend-to-be-most-vulnerable-to-ransomware-attacks/943670/22 "2021-06-14T01:49:58Z")

</div>

> [@JRDelirious](#):
>
> so this new OS will regularly “phone home” w/o asking me for permission and tell them what I’ve been doing

This is one of my biggest complaints about OS vendors. Security fixes and feature updates should be completely separate. Sometimes they’re good about it, but it always seems like Microsoft and Apple eventually give in to their dark impulses and roll the two together.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-operating-systems-tend-to-be-most-vulnerable-to-ransomware-attacks/943670.md?page=1)