(meandering in via Twitter) Ah, software! And hardware!
What happens when it's gone past its End of Life really depends on what it is and how it was built. The official thing that happens with everything that's EOL-ed is that the company that is responsible for it stops supporting it, and everyone who was using it is without their help. The practical effects depend on details. If the program is entirely contained on the user's computer, then it won't get updates, and if something goes wrong with it, the company that made it won't help. This can be pretty benign if it's a stable little program that not much can go wrong with and it doesn't need to change with the times (like a game or something). If it's something that has to periodically check in with the mothership for some reason, and the mothership's not there, it's broken, even if parts of it still work. Especially dangerous is something like an antivirus program, which depends on regular updates to be able to catch the newest and worst things going around -- people running out-of-date antivirus software may think they are protected, and do things they wouldn't do if unprotected. If it's something that has all of its functionality "in the cloud", like Delicious -- it's just gone.
Places that don't have access to the most up-to-date software -- again, this is not my area of specialty, but I've heard enough about old versions of Windows with out-of-date protection in those areas to think that it's quite a thing, and that lower-tech areas are going to have a higher rate of malware infection. Though they're also likely to have slower net connections, which makes them less of a target-of-choice.
no subject
What happens when it's gone past its End of Life really depends on what it is and how it was built. The official thing that happens with everything that's EOL-ed is that the company that is responsible for it stops supporting it, and everyone who was using it is without their help. The practical effects depend on details. If the program is entirely contained on the user's computer, then it won't get updates, and if something goes wrong with it, the company that made it won't help. This can be pretty benign if it's a stable little program that not much can go wrong with and it doesn't need to change with the times (like a game or something). If it's something that has to periodically check in with the mothership for some reason, and the mothership's not there, it's broken, even if parts of it still work. Especially dangerous is something like an antivirus program, which depends on regular updates to be able to catch the newest and worst things going around -- people running out-of-date antivirus software may think they are protected, and do things they wouldn't do if unprotected. If it's something that has all of its functionality "in the cloud", like Delicious -- it's just gone.
Places that don't have access to the most up-to-date software -- again, this is not my area of specialty, but I've heard enough about old versions of Windows with out-of-date protection in those areas to think that it's quite a thing, and that lower-tech areas are going to have a higher rate of malware infection. Though they're also likely to have slower net connections, which makes them less of a target-of-choice.