>I'm not talking about a deep understanding of computers, just basic literacy that would obviate the excuse for tight, walled gardens and locked down devices.I disagree on this. I have a friend who has "basic computer literacy" as in knows how to use MS Excel, KeePass, etc. And yet, she inadvertently got a virus on her laptop. It was puzzling how she could have gotten it. She doesn't visit the usual suspects of porn/gaming/gambling/etc websites. Just normal stuff like CNN, WSJ, etc. The only reason we found out about it was her email account got locked out by the ISP. Apparently, the malware found her MS Outlook email account and used a hidden background service to send a bunch of spam messages using her email profile. Understandably, the ISP monitors SMTP traffic sent from residential addresses and when it hits an unusual threshold, they lock out the account. To clean up the malware, I reformatted her laptop and got the email reset with a new password.
On the other hand, with her Apple iPhone and the locked-down walled garden, I really don't have to worry about malware to the same degree. Yes, the Apple app review process is not infallible and theoretically, she could get infected by downloading a fake bank app that steals all her money. However, the possibilities for that nightmare scenario are drastically reduced in the closed Apple ecosystem.
Even programmers, who we'd classify has uber-computer-literate compared to the general population can unwittingly get bit by malware:
Javascript programmers vulnerable to NPM package repository malware:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/12/npm_eslint/
Microsoft's uber geek expert Mark Russinovich got infected by Sony's rootkit: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/markrussinovich/2005/10/...
What's the solution for those programmers? Educate them on how to use computers? But they're already educated.
Yes, I get the hacker ethos of not having locked-down devices but we also overestimate the ability for the general population to maintain safe computing devices. Heck, I'm a techie that programs in Xcode and I'm not confident I'm really literate on all the vulnerabilities of the iPhone. Thus, it seems unreasonable I would expect non-programmers to "just be educated" to make the App Store's curation unnecessary.