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Security Know-It-Alls Debate Windows UAC

Security pundits crave attention the same way Rod Blagojevich loves the camera. Latest case in point: Security experts are publicly complaining that User Account Control (UAC) in the Windows 7 beta can be taken over by hackers who can then gain elevated privileges. Microsoft counters that Windows 7 is perfectly safe, but it's making a couple of tweaks to make UAC safer.

I'm no expert on this debate, but I do know the new UAC is a lot less intrusive than in Vista. By default, Windows 7 only notifies you when a program is trying to make a change. Users can also set it to "never notify" or "notify always," which is the Vista default. This is a nice change indeed.

Posted by Doug Barney on February 06, 2009


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