My brother and his wife bought their kids a new computer a little over a year ago. Since then, I’ve been over there at least 4 times removing spyware. The kids are teenagers, and should know better, but they don’t.
I just spent three hours there, attempting to install a wireless router so they can hook up another, older computer to the Internet. The original computer was so full of spyware than I literally couldn’t reboot, bring up IE, and type a URL into the address line. This was after running AdAware and Spybot in safe mode. I finally threw up my hands and said “F@#$$ it, I’m reinstalling Windows.” Which I did.
So now they have a nice, clean installation. I chucked IE and installed FireFox, and turned off downloading, cookies, and Java. I turned on the popup blocker. Then I installed all the latest and greatest security updates from MS, and the free version of ZoneAlarm.
I do not relish coming back in another 2 months and spending another Saturday cleaning their computer. So what else can I do, short of removing the Internet connection, that will keep this computer relatively clean?
They only need to be able to surf the Web, use MS Works, and they’d like to use AOL’s IM. They’re perfectly fine with no downloading capabilities. At least, their parents are. I suspect the next time I go over there, some sort of mp3 sharing thing will be installed, as well as countless other crap. I’d like to prevent this. Is there any way to do so?
I was having intractable spyware and found the programs and suggestions at this site to be the only way to get rid of everything malware/spyware. It’s worked wonders- especially the forum for posting registry hidden programs (that none of the anti-spyware stuff was abe to get rid of).
Good luck,
PC
Beyond what you’ve already done the next best thing is “education”. Starting with a clean machine and making IE as inaccessible as possible is a great beginning, what you need to look out for are all the various games, downloaders, “smilies” and other fun widgets that people think are safe to install. They download these things without realizing that they are agreeing to install some nasty stuff as well.
You should also let them know that if they get an unrequested popup telling them that something may be wrong and “click here to fix this problem” it’s quite likely an attempt to get them to install something.
If you are running Windows XP, you should install a free copy of Microsoft AntiSpyware. In addition to a good spyware scanner/remover, it includes an excellent real time application that runs in the background and prevents programs from installing themselves without your permission.
Smilies, popups? That reminds me–in Firefox Tips & Tricks there’s code you can put in usercontent.css which blocks virtually every ad. It’ll at least keep the kids from clicking on stupid things.
It’s actually pretty easy. Do not attach it to the Internet, and don’t ever put a floppy disk in it. We can pretty well guarantee that it will stay free of Spyware, viruses, and porno.
Granted, it won’t be anywhere near as useful that way, but it will stay clean.
HA! I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve tried that. These teenagers simply don’t give a shit. And why should they? Auntie comes over every 4 months and fixes it for them.
It’s XP. I’m loathe to put MS AntiSpy on it until it’s out of beta. I removed it from my own machine, because although it found a lot of stuff, it had issues with freezing up my computer every five minutes or so. When it’s actually released, I’ll try it again.
I was afraid there wasn’t much else I can do, other than unplugging the Internet and removing the floppy drive. Perhaps FireFox will make a difference. We’ll see, I guess.
Don’t give the teenagers admin access to the machine. Create accounts for each user - including your brother - and give the admin account details to your brother.
Did that. Do you have any idea how much spyware bypasses the current user and installs anywhere the hell it wants to?
As it stands, my brother and wife set up the second computer so they have their own and don’t have to share at all with the kids. Still, the kids do use the computer for school and such, so we’d like to keep it working.
This spyware stuff really does suck. I don’t know how people who don’t have sisters in the computer industry keep their machines working.
I haven’t had that problem. I’d suggest installing it, then tell someone how to take it off in case it causes a problem. This also reminds me a bit of a Slashdot article about how it seems like programs are starting to go into “permanent beta.”
Are they running XP Home or Pro (I assume Home)? You’ve locked this thing down tight by the user settings so that at least they can’t install? Enough so that regular scheduled runs of at least Ad-Aware, Spybot, and (maybe) the new MS spyware would keep it clean enough? They’re running at least the MS firewall and some sort of antivirus with limited access through the firewall and all unneeded ports closed?
I keep my machine working by regular runs of Ad-Aware, Spybot, and MS spyware; Firefox with AdBlock and FlashBlock; use of the Proxomitron; use of Spybot’s and SpywareBlaster’s automatic blacklisting of cookies, sites, DLLs, and the like; using Spybot’s and MS’s registry monitors that forces the computer to ask for permission to make any registry changes; being the only user of the system (anyone else who wants to use it gets forced to log in on the guest account); use of MS’s autoupdate for the OS to help close known vulnerabilites; and by not being an idiot.
It’s never good to antagonize friends or family, but I might suggest starting to charge them if you have to start making repeated calls. Especially if its them doing something stupid like installing Kazaa or Gator and not keeping the definitions updated and checked (a few dollars will get SpywareBlaster to autoupdate, MS can be scheduled to run and set to look for updates before running, same with Spybot, but I’m not sure how to get Ad-Aware to autoupdate.)
