Why CERTAIN people should not own Computers....

[Anachronism]

i really hope she is just being slack on the computer ...but be aware...

bones, thanks for the insight (and the PM), but she's fine. She's 65 and very active, alert, and nowhere near as foolish or trusting in most things as editec's commentaries about his mother. The problem is that she is not highly technically inclined. She also tends to wait until she's got 80-100 emails in her inbox to go through them and clean them out. Then she wants to get it done quickly so she doesn't even really look at anything more than the sender. I'm going to go over the "rules" with her again this afternoon.

She's got good virus software on the PC, so I'm hoping it isn't a big deal, but we'll see how bad things are and go from there. I'm HOPING she just saw the message that her Anti-Virus software had detected and blocked the attack and is over-reacting. HOPEFULLY.

 

[brokenarrow]

i really hope she is just being slack on the computer ...but be aware...

bones, thanks for the insight (and the PM), but she's fine. She's 65 and very active, alert, and nowhere near as foolish or trusting in most things as editec's commentaries about his mother. The problem is that she is not highly technically inclined. She also tends to wait until she's got 80-100 emails in her inbox to go through them and clean them out. Then she wants to get it done quickly so she doesn't even really look at anything more than the sender. I'm going to go over the "rules" with her again this afternoon.

She's got good virus software on the PC, so I'm hoping it isn't a big deal, but we'll see how bad things are and go from there. I'm HOPING she just saw the message that her Anti-Virus software had detected and blocked the attack and is over-reacting. HOPEFULLY.

Tell her to keep away from those porno sites. They'll get you every time!

 

[Anachronism]

So I went down to CT yesterday afternoon. I walk into the house and turn her PC on. It comes up to the blue screen telling me that it was shut down improperly and asking how I want Windows to open. I ask it to run the diagnostic. Windows opens perfectly fine. I check her Antivirus/Firewall activity log. With the exception of a couple of attempts to ping her IP address over the last few days there's nothing there. The system status is SECURE. I run the full system scan. It comes up with 16 tracking cookies, but nothing else.

It turns out what she got wasn't a VIRUS, but a SPAM/POP-UP BOMB. The first thing that popped up was one of these "Let us scan your PC Hard Drive" spams that when you try to close it tells you that you have a virus. As you try to close it each time it pops back up. I think we've all seen these things in the past.

So she and I had about a 90 minute conversation and hands-on lesson on how to deal with her email, pop-ups, etc.... She was more than slightly embarassed (as she should have been). Then I got to spend more than 90 minutes trying to make the 65 minute drive home due to the Easter/End of Spring Vacation Week traffic on the highways. Joy.

 

[edthecynic]

So I went down to CT yesterday afternoon. I walk into the house and turn her PC on. It comes up to the blue screen telling me that it was shut down improperly and asking how I want Windows to open. I ask it to run the diagnostic. Windows opens perfectly fine. I check her Antivirus/Firewall activity log. With the exception of a couple of attempts to ping her IP address over the last few days there's nothing there. The system status is SECURE. I run the full system scan. It comes up with 16 tracking cookies, but nothing else.

It turns out what she got wasn't a VIRUS, but a SPAM/POP-UP BOMB. The first thing that popped up was one of these "Let us scan your PC Hard Drive" spams that when you try to close it tells you that you have a virus. As you try to close it each time it pops back up. I think we've all seen these things in the past.

So she and I had about a 90 minute conversation and hands-on lesson on how to deal with her email, pop-ups, etc.... She was more than slightly embarassed (as she should have been). Then I got to spend more than 90 minutes trying to make the 65 minute drive home due to the Easter/End of Spring Vacation Week traffic on the highways. Joy.

Hey! You got to spend some quality time with your mom for Easter.
I thought you said you love your mom.

 

[Anachronism]

Hey! You got to spend some quality time with your mom for Easter. I thought you said you love your mom.

ed, I've spent more time with my mother in the last five weeks than I had in probably the prior year. I spent a week with her around my surgery last moth. I was with her for two days the weekend before and for the day yesterday. I could have gotten a half dozen things that I need to do in my apartment yesterday instead of wasting about 7 hours of my time traveling down there and back. Yes, she's trying to get stuff done so she can complete the sale of her home. What I think she's missing is that I'm trying to get stuff done so I can hopefully get out of my apartment ASAP as well. My stuff isn't going to sort, clean, pack or discard itself any more than her stuff will.

 

[brokenarrow]

So I went down to CT yesterday afternoon. I walk into the house and turn her PC on. It comes up to the blue screen telling me that it was shut down improperly and asking how I want Windows to open. I ask it to run the diagnostic. Windows opens perfectly fine. I check her Antivirus/Firewall activity log. With the exception of a couple of attempts to ping her IP address over the last few days there's nothing there. The system status is SECURE. I run the full system scan. It comes up with 16 tracking cookies, but nothing else.

It turns out what she got wasn't a VIRUS, but a SPAM/POP-UP BOMB. The first thing that popped up was one of these "Let us scan your PC Hard Drive" spams that when you try to close it tells you that you have a virus. As you try to close it each time it pops back up. I think we've all seen these things in the past.

So she and I had about a 90 minute conversation and hands-on lesson on how to deal with her email, pop-ups, etc.... She was more than slightly embarassed (as she should have been). Then I got to spend more than 90 minutes trying to make the 65 minute drive home due to the Easter/End of Spring Vacation Week traffic on the highways. Joy.

When I have gotten those in the past, I just open a new IE window and keep working.

 

[signelect]

I have a computer and I am the poster child for mistakes. I can turn it on and off and work a couple of programs, after that I am lost. I can't spell facebook or twitter and don't know how or what they do. Have compassion on us old folks.

 

[KissMy]

Don't use Outlook or any other PC based email & you won't have any problems. Use an internet email system like Yahoo & you will never get a virus again. They will scan the email & attachments for you so you won't get a virus.

I did this to all the people at work & my family almost 10 years ago & they have never got an email virus since. Also instruct them to never click on a pop-up window claiming they have a virus while searching the web. This will unleash Trojan worm hell on their PC. I block all those dangerous sites by dropping the latest hosts file list into C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

Following these simple rules will prevent attacks. We have not used Anti-Virus or spy-ware software in almost 10 years & have never got a virus since I set-up things this way & made users swear they will never click a virus detected click to scan button again. Our PCs run more than twice as fast without having to have Anti-Virus software scanning every file in the background. Ccleaner is also the best computer maintenance program.

 

[Foxfyre]

Don't use Outlook or any other PC based email & you won't have any problems. Use an internet email system like Yahoo & you will never get a virus again. They will scan the email & attachments for you so you won't get a virus.

I did this to all the people at work & my family almost 10 years ago & they have never got an email virus since. Also instruct them to never click on a pop-up window claiming they have a virus while searching the web. This will unleash Trojan worm hell on their PC. I block all those dangerous sites by dropping the latest hosts file list into C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

Following these simple rules will prevent attacks. We have not used Anti-Virus or spy-ware software in almost 10 years & have never got a virus since I set-up things this way & made users swear they will never click a virus detected click to scan button again. Our PCs run more than twice as fast without having to have Anti-Virus software scanning every file in the background. Ccleaner is also the best computer maintenance program.

AOL does a good job of scanning e-mail for viruses too and all you said is excellent advice. But you can also pick up bad bugs just surfing and I do have software on my computer that alerts me when I hit a suspicious website so I know to move on quickly and not proceed at that site. That's when having a malware blocker or scrubber is useful. An anti-virus program usually isn't equipped to detect that stuff.

 

[Foxfyre]

I have a computer and I am the poster child for mistakes. I can turn it on and off and work a couple of programs, after that I am lost. I can't spell facebook or twitter and don't know how or what they do. Have compassion on us old folks.

Computer mistakes are no biggie and rarely fatal and it is the best way to learn. Us 'old folks', even those of us who are old enough to remember when computers didn't exist for homes or ordinary businesses, can learn to run ordinary programs competently on a computer. I have relatives my age and even younger who have no interest and without interest you don't develop the aptitude. But I love my computer even though I am mostly a technical ignoramus. (I depend on the 10-year-old neighbor for technical stuff.) I can't imagine life without it now.