How do I Prevent a Child From Downloading Viruses?

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Alley_Dweller

Use sandbox software such as Sandboxie or the paid version of Avast!.

However, the downside is that the child will not be able to save anything to the computer permanently. When the session ends, everything written to the disk will be lost.

You can remove that downside by buying the kid a flash drive (probably for less than $25) where they can store anything they need to store for their homework. Possibly a virus could hide itself on the flash drive, but as long as nobody else in the family ever used that flash drive, that wouldn’t matter.

That is the system commonly used in our libraries here: people log in to the public computers; when they log in the computer automatically restores to a ‘clean’ version of the system, deleting anything that was written to the memory or disk by the previous user. So every user always starts from an identical, clean version of the system. And you often see users bringing their own flash drive to save data. (And forgetting the flash drive behind when they leave the library, but that’s another problem.)

[carnivorousplant]

@t-bonham@scc.net

You can remove that downside by buying the kid a flash drive (probably for less than $25) where they can store anything they need to store for their homework.

Don’t let him take it to school to swap viruses with his or her pals.

[Harmonix]

meh.

Why so worried? The kid will probably be better at using a computer than you are in just a few years. (presumption: kids learn things fast…) Learning how to deal with and recover from viruses on the computer is part of the learning curve.

Presuming that is that this will be the KIDS computer and thus likely has very little sensitive information on it.

[April_R]

@brazil84

Is there any way to set things up so a child can safely search the internet for school work without harming the computer?

Encyclopedia Britannica

The only way that would harm a computer is if he dropped it on the computer

Barring your ability to provide adequate self space to the full set of EBs with updated volumes every year, I would suggest getting him an inexpensive tablet or notebook of his own which he uses for himself and tell him to stay the frack away from your computer.

I won’t even go in to what you should do to ensure he is using it for homework and not “homework”

[BigT]

@Harmonix

meh.

Why so worried? The kid will probably be better at using a computer than you are in just a few years. (presumption: kids learn things fast…) Learning how to deal with and recover from viruses on the computer is part of the learning curve.

Presuming that is that this will be the KIDS computer and thus likely has very little sensitive information on it.

Malware on one computer is a security risk to every other computer that shares a network connection. You are only as protected as your least protected computer.

I mean, I guess the OP could buy two different Internet accounts, and use them separately, but this is an unlikely setup. (And, yes, there are ways of better isolating the more vulnerable computer–but that counts as protection.)

[drachillix]

@BigT

Malware on one computer is a security risk to every other computer that shares a network connection. You are only as protected as your least protected computer.

Actually this is not much of a concern, attacking a machine from the outside like this is extremely difficult even for direct active hack attempts. Most viruses are either spread by drive by exploits or social engineering.