Hi,

A couple weeks ago my little brother stayed the weekend. He brought his 
computer along with him, because he's as much a digital junkie as I am. 
I thought I would install Phun for him, since he's really into mechanics 
and physics-based mayhem in general. But every time I tried to navigate 
through directories, Vista would pop up with a message telling me that 
his computer may be infected with spyware or a virus. I got to looking, 
and sure enough, there's like twenty icons in the system tray, and a 
bunch of unusual tasks running behind the curtain. Toolbar this, agent 
that. It was ridiculous. My little brother had no idea what half of that 
stuff was. So I headed to the control panel, to see what I could 
uninstall. It was like a battlefield, with the computer side losing. I 
did the best I could, deleting every potentially malignant piece of 
worthless software I could find.

My question is how does does this happen? And why does it happen to some 
people more than others? How can a person be downloading and installing 
software without even knowing it? All I can guess is that it must be 
like what I experienced a few weeks back, when I accidentally clicked 
"yes" to a pop-up dialog. (my one and only incident in over ten years of 
computing [yes, I'm proud])

Do any of you out there know people who always seem to have infested 
computers? Can you spot a pattern of (mis)use which may be valuable to 
help these people keep their computers healthy?

Sam

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Our tech guy is always groaning about home users- that is users who work 
from home using company owned laptops, whose computers are always infested 
with malware. The worst cases are usually people who let their children 
occaisionally use the equipment to surf the internet. Another one who always 
has alot of trouble is the 82 year old founder of our company who doesn't 
actually actively work at the company anymore but is always calling saying 
he constantly gets unrelenting popups advertising sex websites. I wonder 
what he may have been up to?
I think most of the time these people aren't paying attention to the things 
they click on including reading the license agreements, etc.
The company I work for is in far from having a fascist attitude toward what 
people are using the equipment for, but we recently had to block some 
websites including youtube, myspace and facebook and the that has really 
improved our network utilization.

-- 

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Halbert wrote:
> Our tech guy is always groaning about home users- that is users who work 
> from home using company owned laptops, whose computers are always infested 
> with malware. The worst cases are usually people who let their children 
> occaisionally use the equipment to surf the internet.

My brother not only uses MySpace, but also downloads a bunch of demo 
games. Having high speed probably doesn't help at all.

Sam

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stbenge wrote:
> Do any of you out there know people who always seem to have infested 
> computers? Can you spot a pattern of (mis)use which may be valuable to 
> help these people keep their computers healthy?
> 
> Sam

I help one cousin keep a computer. The pattern was her kids and husband. 
She used it for ebay and banking, nothing else. They had to play every 
game they saw an advertisement for. "Free Demo" meant the game had to be 
downloaded, the EULA ignored, and everything clicked through.

The kids also wanted free music. Some P2P programs exist to just share 
stuff, others want to make some money and install all sorts of ad-ware 
pop-ups and other junk. Pointed the kids to the Wikipedia page that 
lists which ones are malware free, and threatened to make an mp3 
deleting script that would run on startup. Didn't work, but they are in 
college now, so someone else's computer problem.

Another one was the 'must click' syndrome. You know the type, who use 
MySpace or Facebook and have to install every application or icon pack 
they see. "New emoticons, I have to have those" or "It's free, why 
shouldn't I install it?" The basic economic speech of "Free just means 
you are paying for it in ways you aren't looking for." is sometimes 
enough, other times it's not.

Last one I can think of was running the computer without a firewall. 
This was during the middle of Blaster's outbreak. They had turned off 
the router because it had blocked some installed game, and the computer 
wouldn't quit restarting. I put the router back on, ran the network 
through it, and waited an hour drinking tea. To prove a point, I put it 
back on the modem without a firewall, and only had to wait 2 to 5 
minutes before it restarted. I think they still keep the router in the 
loop. Public wifi is also on this list, though I hope Windows has gotten 
better default firewall settings since Blaster.

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Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> stbenge wrote:
>> Do any of you out there know people who always seem to have infested 
>> computers? Can you spot a pattern of (mis)use which may be valuable to 
>> help these people keep their computers healthy?
>>
>> Sam
> 
> I help one cousin keep a computer. The pattern was her kids and husband. 
> She used it for ebay and banking, nothing else. They had to play every 
> game they saw an advertisement for. "Free Demo" meant the game had to be 
> downloaded, the EULA ignored, and everything clicked through.

Some EULAs I ignore. I'm pretty confident with most well-known and 
trusted programs (eg. POV-Ray).

> deleting script that would run on startup. Didn't work, but they are in 
> college now, so someone else's computer problem.

Good news for your cousin!

> Another one was the 'must click' syndrome. You know the type, who use 
> MySpace or Facebook and have to install every application or icon pack 
> they see. "New emoticons, I have to have those" or "It's free, why 
> shouldn't I install it?" The basic economic speech of "Free just means 
> you are paying for it in ways you aren't looking for." is sometimes 
> enough, other times it's not.

Yes, I think I'm starting to see how this happens. Now to convince my 
little brother not to do these things...

> Last one I can think of was running the computer without a firewall.

My little bro's firewall was off as well. He didn't even realize that he 
had one, let alone that he should always keep the thing on! Oh well, if 
his dad wants to buy him a new computer every two years, it's not my 
problem :/

At least I can prevent people like my dad misusing his computer when he 
finally gets online :)

Sam

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"Sabrina Kilian" <"ykgp at vtSPAM.edu"> wrote:
> [...]downloaded, the EULA ignored, and everything clicked through.

There was some thing I'd gotten (I think a piece of hardware) where its 
instruction sheet explicitly tells you to 'just keep clicking next until the 
dialogues go away' on installing.  It was a reputable product, too, just 
instilling poor behaviour processes in users.

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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> Do any of you out there know people who always seem to have infested 
> computers? Can you spot a pattern of (mis)use which may be valuable to 
> help these people keep their computers healthy?

I have a friend who is exactly like this, I had fixed some software issues 
on his computer a number of times, then finally a stick of RAM went bad and 
I built him a new PC with a fresh installation of XP.  Within a few weeks he 
called me up to go and take a look because it wasn't working.  What he had 
done was incredible, not only had he downloaded and installed almost every 
piece of anti-virus/spyware/malware software in existence, he had installed 
all sorts of dodgy software when prompted with "Your computer seems to have 
a virus, install XXXXX to fix it".  The result was a huge mess, I have no 
idea whether he actually had a virus or not, but it wouldn't have made any 
difference.  I fixed it for him by just reinstalling XP, installed ONE AV 
software and told him that it would catch absolutely everything so no need 
to install any other anti-whatever software.  Haven't heard from him since!

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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> I have a friend who is exactly like this, I had fixed some software issues 
> on his computer a number of times, then finally a stick of RAM went bad and 
> I built him a new PC with a fresh installation of XP.  Within a few weeks he 
> called me up to go and take a look because it wasn't working.  What he had 
> done was incredible, not only had he downloaded and installed almost every 
> piece of anti-virus/spyware/malware software in existence, he had installed 
> all sorts of dodgy software when prompted with "Your computer seems to have 
> a virus, install XXXXX to fix it".  The result was a huge mess, I have no 
> idea whether he actually had a virus or not, but it wouldn't have made any 
> difference.  I fixed it for him by just reinstalling XP, installed ONE AV 
> software and told him that it would catch absolutely everything so no need 
> to install any other anti-whatever software.  Haven't heard from him since!

  I once knew a person who told me that he wanted to "try linux", and that
he downloaded it and ran it, and that it broke his IE because its home page
would always go to a porn site even if he tried to change it.

  Given that linux is not something you simply "download and run" in Windows,
I don't have the faintest idea what exactly is it that he downloaded and ran.
Clearly whatever he did, whether it was that thing he downloaded, or
something else along the way, he got a IE homepage hijacker. But the way he
described it made it clear that he thought that "linux" was something which
breaks your IE.

  He ended up reinstalling the whole XP because of a homepage hijacker.
(He clearly didn't know what malware and homepage hijackers are, nor ever
heard of malware removal tools.)

  I'm pretty sure that to this day he is still convinced that "linux" is
something which breaks your IE.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Halbert <hal### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> I think most of the time these people aren't paying attention to the things 
> they click on including reading the license agreements, etc.

  I suppose that it wouldn't help to install a good firewall and resident
malware scanners in their computers because they would nevertheless pay
zero attention to what the software is telling them and allow everything.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   I once knew a person who told me that he wanted to "try linux", and that
> he downloaded it and ran it, and that it broke his IE because its home page
> would always go to a porn site even if he tried to change it.

>   I'm pretty sure that to this day he is still convinced that "linux" is
> something which breaks your IE.

Heh. I needed a laugh... :-D

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