You say "(we're certain it's a disgruntled former employee)" and also, "The thing is... we're not using illegally copied software."

I'd say you almost certainly have illegal software and said disgruntled former employee is probably the one who installed it without your permission.

The banking is tied to IE but any version will work. My GF uses the banking online here in China as well as buying on Taobao and such like. I have her using win7 with the latest IE version installed.

You're absolutely right on the money here. I've been living in China for 6 years now. My job back home was for some time in PC repair and later server admin so when I got here people naturally asked me to fix their PC's. When I encounter a freshly installed XP box here I run my AV on it instantly before connecting to the web because the pirated XP comes with malware and backdoors pre installed. The People making the pirated disks are getting thousands of ready to use zombie machines that they can then use to hack into your bank and servers back in the USA or send you all that spam that fills you inbox.

When my girlfriend inherited my old laptop last year, she wanted the Chinese language version of windows on it. She first went and got XP. After a few months it croaked and died so I wiped it and went to the shop with her to get a new install. The guy in the shop wanted to put on XP again. I insisted on win7. He said the laptop was too old and slow for win7 and it wouldn't work as well as XP. I told him I had used win7 on that laptop, in English, since the first beta and that win7 was faster than XP even on old systems and so on and so on. He didn't believe me but eventually installed win7 - which he clearly had never used before. When I looked at it, he had installed a hacked version of win7 beta - not the full version.

China is still 5 or more years behind us in many aspects of computing. It is a compulsory part of every university student to learn some basic computing skills. They are taught MS World/Excel, Dreamweaver, Flash and Visual Basic. The students find it boring and generally hate the class. There's no impetus to advance. They just want there computers to remain in 2001 status.

Maxthon id's as IE6 because it is IE6 with some plugins attached. A wolf in sheep's clothing.

Newer versions of IE do run on XP but if you have a pirated XP you can access windows update to download and install them.

I signed up for Weibo last week, having lived in China for 6 years. After the signup process I decided never to use it as it was obviously insecure. During the signup/login you are asked, as usual, to create a username and password. I usually use some nice secure passwords, ten or more letters with caps, numbers and punctuation. However, Weibo popped up a error message saying that I must only use lower-case letters a-z. This massively reduces the number of password combinations.

There's actually quite allot of porn available behind the Great Firewall of China. One thing that westerns don't understand about China is that the whole country is corrupt to the core. If you have enough money, you can get around almost any law. Just bribe a few officials and you can sell porn quite openly in the shops.

So what I reckon happened was that 41% of website failed to pay their bribes on time.

I signed up for a Weibo account last week. I've had a Renren account (Chinese Facebook clone) for over a year now. I can't effectively use either of them due to language difficulties. Really need to practice my Chinese reading. So this gives some insight into how Chinese people view western sites. They just can use them - so they don't care that they are blocked. Why would you worry that Youtube is blocked when you have all the videos you need on Youkou or Tudou.

Complete nonsense. Nobody is forced to use any particular browser in China. Though almost everyone here runs Win XP with IE6 it's because they are pirated copies of windows and so blocked from windows update by MS. There's nothing to stop people using Firefox or Chrome if they wanted.

I'm also in China. Never been any problem getting Slashdot in the last 6 years. However, the Great Firewall isn't so great. I can update my Facebook, Twitter and I'm watching Youtube right now. Their not normally available. You just have to know how to jump the wall.

There was an outcry when google first launched GMail. A senator form CA even proposed a bill to curb GMail's scanning abilities.

Your argument is only valid if the customer knows the level of security. If the bank tells me the money is in a steel vault but is in fact in a wooden box, the the bank is liable for losses. What this ruling has done is wooden boxes as adequate when everyone knows they are not.

What is required is some well publicized hacks of bank systems which would cause a run on the bank involved. What all banks fear most is all the investors withdrawing their money all at the same time. If people feel their bank is not secure, then a run will happen. That will give the banks the financial insentive they need to put security to the forefront of their business.