UAC. Have you turned your's off?

H2SO4 said:

Let me guess - not a "security" MVP?

Microsoft goofed again ... Liking M$ is not a requirement ..

I was never a big believer in UAC. One day (on Vista) I created a .NET app that deleted and modified some important registry keys (services, policies etc). With UAC off the app was able to do its damage. No alerts from AV since it wasnt a known threat. Couldnt log on to my user account after that.

Restored a fresh drive image and re-ran the app with UAC enabled. No changes were made to the registry. No prompts were displayed.

For me seeing was believing and I can say that UAC does do more behind the scenes than displaying a simple prompt. It was worth the time I invested to test it.

Disk4mat said:

I was never a big believer in UAC. One day (on Vista) I created a .NET app that deleted and modified some important registry keys (services, policies etc). With UAC off the app was able to do its damage. No alerts from AV since it wasnt a known threat. Couldnt log on to my user account after that.

Restored a fresh drive image and re-ran the app with UAC enabled. No changes were made to the registry. No prompts were displayed.

For me seeing was believing and I can say that UAC does do more behind the scenes than displaying a simple prompt. It was worth the time I invested to test it.

Have rep :)

The UAC is indeed far more than "the prompt", and a preponderance of UAC prompts in a given app is in fact an indication of relatively poor design from a security standpoint.

I leave mine as installed.

I tried it for a short while, but it's back to being completely off. I only have a few applications, and I perform various extensive disk checks regularly.

I also use UAC at the default levels. After I get past the first couple days on a system, not much gets installed. Therefore, if something DOES try to install I'd like to know about it!

Combined with the real-time monitoring of Norton Internet Secutiry 2010, UAC protects me from myself more often than not.

kegobeer said:

esteban said:

I tried it for a short while, but it's back to being completely off. I only have a few applications, and I perform various extensive disk checks regularly.

Why do you continually check your drives?

I was going to ask the same thing. Seems somewhat odd to continuously check your drives for errors...but then disable UAC because it prompts far too often when checking your drives over and over again.

pparks1 said:

kegobeer said:

esteban said:

I tried it for a short while, but it's back to being completely off. I only have a few applications, and I perform various extensive disk checks regularly.

Why do you continually check your drives?

I was going to ask the same thing. Seems somewhat odd to continuously check your drives for errors...but then disable UAC because it prompts far too often when checking your drives over and over again.

Once a week isn't continuously.

esteban said:

Once a week isn't continuously.

So, you do extensive checks once per week...but find that UAC is overly intrusive with a few prompts once per week? I think this just reaffirms my suspicions that people often exaggerate the nagging nature of this tool and simply disable it because they don't feel it provides any value.