Quote Originally Posted by Kinstonian View Post
Good, because this thread is about firewalls.



Secure by default is great and I love it. However, it only means you have to do less to harden the OS before you start using it.

It's a term that only covers the very beginning of security, and doesn't mean you're secure tomorrow when you install additional software/services, have to install patches, determine what action to take after getting a security warning in FireFox/NoScript, back up your important data, choose strong passwords for websites, etc. Secure by default is a small part of security, and it has an increasingly smaller impact on security as time goes by.

Even if you don't have any services you can still get hacked through a client side vulnerability. That's why you need to keep things like your browser updated and use NoScript, etc.
Well thank you very much for posting this as this is exactly what I'm ranting about the last couple of pages. I'm talking about that absolute security is an illusion where a simple front-end giving you the option to simply mark a checkbox to block something only amplifies this illusion.

I'm nowhere in contradiction with what you've posted right now. This thread is not only about firewalls but also about the security of Ubuntu where I just tired to highlight that it won't help to move Ubuntu to the thinking patterns of new users migrated from another OS but instead we should invest energy in helping those new users to adopt a new thinking pattern.