Reply #66: One partial solution: revert to original state.

[sofa king]

Public terminals often are set up to time out and then revert to their original state, no matter what data is exchanged during a user session. Users are free to download from the terminal, but if they don't that data is destroyed shortly thereafter when the system goes back to its original setup.

That effectively neutralizes a lot of OS and browser-level attacks, because the malicious code usually cannot survive the re-write (or re-set, or do-over, or whatever you guys call it). I'm sure there's a zillion ways around it, and it's just as easy to grab as any other OS of its ilk for a limited time, but I'm told such an approach has been pretty successful overall.

I wonder if it would be possible to force an OS to almost constantly revert to its original state, while keeping a persistent environment and data storage somewhere else, like those clouds you Aristophanes fans keep crowing about. That, at least, might prevent ignorant-ass users like me from getting their systems owned so easily.

Oh, wait. Isn't that more or less what smart phones already do?

Never mind.