It is always a question of degree of suspectibility. Comparing Flash/Excel combo with others is a joke and speaks tons about people doing the comparison. Also, another one being PDF. Calling them secure is a joke. One has to be suicidal/kamikaze type in Linux to achieve to get pwned like this. The security in linux is not based on a single point of failure, you will have to often exploit multiple exploits simultaneously to achieve a complete trojan-like remote control of the system, otherwise you will end atmost causing a DoS. Well, as mentioned earlier I cannot speak about people running internet explorer/notepad under WINE in linux ..

From the perspective of an Indian, all I can say is that there is nothing to worry about. There are tons of other issues (it is a developing nation) to care about and which undermine stability of government on a day to day basis. What however troubles me is that this request can be a proxy one -- that is US government is pressurizing the present gov. for such practices -- not surprising after the nuclear deal and its terms. Also, the factor of scalability comes into picture. Just imagine the infrastructure required to cast a net on millions of netizens.

Iframes have been the vector of attack in web domain for a long time. Blocking iframes has two fold advantage -- blocks these kind of exploits and blocks crap ads too. Blocking(/Unblocking them if required) them isnt that hard either.

People literally spend days playing WOW and other mmorpgs. It would be nice if they can integrate some folding, SETI problem statements into the game. May be we can find aliens and the cure the fun way.