What’s up everybody? It’s Eddie Z here from EZ Trading Computers, and you’re watching Trading Computer Secrets.
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I just want to talk about Windows 7 very quickly and why you should worry about it a little bit if you happen to still use it.
Now, my research shows about 45% of traders are still using Windows 7, and it’s an issue. So back in January, Microsoft totally discontinued support and security patches for Windows 7.
So now you might be thinking, you know, Microsoft, they’ve kind of tricked us over the years, right? If you remember Y2K, maybe I’m dating myself a little, but if you remember the Y2K nonsense, it turned out to be utterly nothing. Nothing happened.
And if you remember back when they brought out a new operating system called Windows Vista to replace Windows XP, that was a disaster. And even more recently, when they first came out with Windows 8 to replace Windows 7, another disaster.
So I know most of us don’t think too highly of Microsoft these days. So when we hear an announcement like this, it’s hard to take them seriously. But it is very serious. And let me explain quickly why it is serious.
All of the operating systems over the years that Microsoft has come out with were designed with a very similar software architecture. So Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 10, they all have a very similar source code, a very similar architectural source code.
And here’s the problem.
As new security patches come out now for Windows 10, hackers can take that patch code, the source code, reverse engineer it, and find the equivalent vulnerability inside of Windows 7. And then exploit it because there’s no equivalent security patch for Windows 7.
So what will happen as time goes by, the more people stay on Windows 7, the more vulnerable they’ll become. So it is a big deal, and actually becomes a bigger deal as time goes on.
So all these vulnerabilities have the potential to give you malware, give you viruses, something called ransomware (if you’ve never heard of that). And of course the biggest one is identity theft.
Now the one we see the most is ransomware.
People call into our tech support desk all the time. And we find they’ve been downloading and getting ransomware quite a bit. It’s a continuous flow for literally the past seven or eight years. And it’s kind of scary.
So somebody goes to like an adult-related website, or some fishy gambling-related website, or some just kind of off-color, weird website. They download something. And then all of a sudden, the computer locks up. And it demands a credit card to get unlocked, essentially holding your computer for ransom.
And this is still going on in a big way. So these kinds of things can be infuriating if you’re a trader. And it can be a big mess for you.
So if you guys are on Windows 7, seriously, it’s time to make a change. And if you’re still on Windows 7, it’s probably because your computer is pretty old. So I probably talked more about Windows 7 than I needed to, but seriously, it can be a big mistake if you still choose to run Windows 7.
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Thanks for watching, and if you haven’t already, please go ahead and download our Complete Guide to Trading Computers by clicking the link. This guide is jam-packed with great tips so you can totally optimize your trading experience.
My name’s Eddie Z, and I’ll see you in the very next video.