I've never been one of the people who bought the idea that Windows was less secure than Linux or vice versa.

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When you're asking the question "how secure is it?", the argument between open-source and proprietary security models is pointless.

But the security implications surrounding Linux have little to do with open-source software development. They have to do with the basic security model of Unix. For example, many of the security issues that have come out about Linux have also come out about Solaris, HPUX, Tru64, etc., all of which are not much more open-source than Windows.

Regardless, I think that you're wrong in your statement. There have been any number of closed-source products that have had back doors in them intentionally placed there by the developers. Years later, someone stumbled onto them and reported it. No one knows how long disreputable people sat on it and used it. If such a thing existed in an open-source program, it would be discovered very quickly.

In addition, are you going to trust some cryptographic process for which you don't know the algorithm or implementation? If you are, you're a sucker.

There are a number of other similar issues. The problem being that there may well be and probably are as many security issues in closed-source software as in open-source, but the only way to find them in closed-source software is to stumble on them, possibly by taking educated guesses about where something might go wrong. Not knowing about security problems in a product does not make those problems nonexistant.