Q. Is this really as harmful as you think?
A. Go to your parents house, your grandparents house etc and look at their Windows PC, look at the installed software in the past year, and try to use the device. Run some antivirus scans. There’s no way this implementation doesn’t end in tears — there’s a reason there’s a trillion dollar security industry, and that most problems revolve around malware and endpoints.
I didn’t downvote.
If this was a junior candidate or something, I may have let it slide. But this was a senior candidate, which means they are supposed to be a technical leader for the team. I can’t have someone in that role with such fundamental misunderstandings. There were more red flags than just that one, I also don’t fail people for one gaff (e.g. I just passed a senior that bombed the coding challenge, but it was obvious they were over-thinking it).