Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?
This is pretty remarkable given that my dad only uses it watch golf videos and edit some photos in lightroom. He may occasionally indulge in some porn cough.
I figured he'd be relatively safe as I installed an Adblocker and had Norton installed on the device but I did not realise how vulnerable he was until I found out he can't tell the difference between a pop up and a genuine desktop notification. He has even clicked through on a "You have been chosen to win an iPhone 7" link recently - he saw no harm in at least seeing what might happen.
He also likes to download videos from youtube so I taught him how to use youtube-dl but ended up downloading some malware-infected ripper because it had a more convenient UI.
How do I educate someone from such a base level?
What can I put on the PC to protect them? I avoided using scriptblockers as I don't think they are tech savvy enough to work out why a page might not be working.
220 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 241 ms ] threadMy dad is more dangerous because he has some some idea of what he has just enough of an idea to know what he is doing but not enough of an idea to actually protect himself. He also despises all Apple products alas...
...but to answer your question perhaps you can get your parents a Chromebook? I'm not sure what photo editing options exist on the platform, but hopefully it's an obscure enough platform to avoid the majority of malware.
You don't want to have to support them using a new OS for the first time - you'll be in for a headache. I use Deepfreeze for anyone who is a "problem user" and most don't even realize they have it if it's set up right.
I still think that the second-best answer is to get a tablet or phablet. My grandmother has mostly switched to an iPad and the vast majority of real problems disappeared. There's the occasional 'how I do get photo <x> to target <y>', but nothing serious.
Feels a bit like defeat though.
You're right about their site though, every single time they've changed it the site has looked more scammy/crappy and been harder to get where I need to go. If I hadn't used their product before I would go to that site and immediately leave.
As another option, assuming you can use Linux, could go down the route of using Tails or another live distro:
https://tails.boum.org/
Locking down the machines is fine if you don't get any privilege exploits that take over the machine. Plus, this puts the machine in a known, good state every time we reboot or have a new user.
Cannot use Linux (I would use PC-BSD given our BSD infrastructure).
but in that case deepfreeze isn't going to save you either.
privilege exploits = SYSTEM access = kernel mode access = ability to bypass deep freeze (by circumventing their IO driver)
Also, have a look at how suitable a Chromebook will be for his workflow (simpler to maintain from your perspective and harder to infect).
I think you need to explain to them that the Internet is too much like the Wild West, and they need to stick to trusted web sites, as their "sight" is not tuned to see the dangers. Leaving them too scared to randomly surf might not be a bad thing, in this situation. I have the same type of situation with my 85 year old mother. She is somewhat tech savvy, but not enough. Her browser has every possible 3rd party toolbar, no matter how much I educate her on the situation...
removed her user's admin privileges
install flashblock - one of the ones where you have to click on the video to make it run
spent a long time explaining that you will never be chosen to win something, MS support never rings you to tell you have a virus, if something takes over the whole screen and tells you anything suspicious/implausible to press alt+f4
convinced her free music isnt worth the risk of downloading something that trashes the machine. installed spotify
What are your thoughts on file-syncing using DropBox? Solutions have to be easier than breathing - I used to take a regular image of the PC for backup purposes but then my dad would complain he couldn't actually view the files.
https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/dat...
A small addition, how often do they need to install new software after initial setup? Maybe take away admin privileges?
The only real software he would need at the moment is for photoediting
Cheap, keeps itself up to date, fully cloud based.
It wouldn't tick the Lightroom box but it does the internet based stuff extremely well with low maintenance.
Biggest word of warning though is that Google are totally happy to change things with no warning or how or why, which can be very confusing.
For example, they stopped a direct route to import photos from an SD card or alike to google photos. No automated replacement workflow.
She didn't realize that the password to log in to your computer was the sync'd to her Google password. So she would type some random password 5 times, until the Chromebook said "use your Google password to reset your Chromebook password", and would then log in with that. Every single time.
Some website managed to convince her to switch to developer mode to install a non-web-store extension that overwrites the new tab page and search functionality with ads. Chrome is a little more aggressive about not letting you change the New Tab page these days, asking you occasionally if you still want the extension to control it (even for the new tab page I use, an extension from Google).
But despite that, she got a lot out of the computer, so overall it worked quite well. And we fixed those two issues, so I don't think there are any problems now.
I'm not even mad, I'm honestly impressed both that your mom went to such lengths and that a website managed to convince a layperson to do such a thing.
I had to create my own "extension" and load it up in developer mode to get the exact functionality I wanted (an empty page).
I've been using https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jonikckfpolfcdcgdf... (on standard Linux) for ages myself.
I assume this wasn't a device where she had to open the case and short out some jumpers to enable Developer Mode? =)
Lightroom to me means the user is in the more advanced category. I'm routinely amazed at what Google photos does without any input (tagging, grouping, enhancing), and if I want to tweak pics Snapseed works really well. The only time I startup LR now is if I pull the DSLR out.
http://amzn.to/2fkervN
Ultimately, they're adults, and the last thing your father will want is to be treated like a child on his own machine. If he fucks something up, fix it, and tell him what he can do to not have that issue come up again.
I am all for them learning and making their own mistakes but I know them well enough to know that this wouldn't really work in their case - I know them well enough that ultimately they want something that just works with minimal effort, the stakes are also high in that I don't want them bricking a PC (100s of $) or getting hit by identity fraud.
I'd go mac if my dad didn't hate it so much.
I've had no tech support calls for a couple of years now.
I think a chromebook is a good option if a keyboard is required.
It's a losing battle at this point. Your time is better spent educating them against social engineering attacks (I'm still afraid my mom is going to return a call to the voicemail the "IRS" left)
The "This is Microsoft calling..." scams are even worse. Many older people have very little understanding of what is actually installed on their computer and what the various pieces do. My mother in law has fallen for the fake AV popup advert multiple times this year.
My deeper fear is that they rooted my dad's machine and have been up to nefarious stuff ever since, but i'll never know. He won't let me touch it.
Oh and the IRS is now contracting private debt collectors, so there may now be "legitimate" calls regarding the IRS....
We got our mom a computer, a cheap one, and told her to play with it. Break it. Click everywhere.
Soon enough she was playing with windows settings. Soon enough nothing worked. She now knew you can brick computer, she is more careful.
We fixed the computer and she explored the internet. She asked how she could download wallpapers, we introduced her to torrents and file sharing. She got viruses. She learned that you can get virus online and they will delete your hard worked wallpaper collection. She is aware of the dangers of the internet now.
For a while you would download all the free adblockers, anti-virus, etc., she could find and put them on CDs. She learned to clean her own computer.
Right now she is very comfortable with computers and it allows her to have more freedom. She will easily connect with people online, like we do here. I'm certain it has helped her keeping smart.
She even feel out pain now. Whenever one of her neighbours lady has issues with computers they call her.
20 years later after countless errors my computer gets reinstalled when Microsoft pushes out a garbage patch or I get new hardware.
Thank you for this very important reminder. Everyone has to learn this at some point, and will necessarily start from a position of relative ignorance; the fact that someone hasn't learned it yet doesn't mean that he or she is stupid, and it's wrong to treat it as such. (Not to say that anyone here, particularly the poster, has said or even thinks this; but it's easy to fall into that mindset, at least for me.)
She does some Amazon orders every now and then but that's it.
It's a big investment, an investment many of us don't remember making since it was effectively part of our childhood. That same investment, in a world with special purpose computing devices, has a very low ROI for people who would rather be doing something else.
Maybe fractionally higher power consumption, and perhaps you'd need a GPU for it, but if both ends have really decent internet, that could very legitimately work.
Make one of these and you'll end up with a lot of money.
It's tricky. You could for example pick seL4, but then you have no router. That could be interpreted as an amazing opportunity to make a new stack, or a feat significantly less interesting and more strenuous than climbing Mt. Everest.
Then on the hardware side, do you pick x86 (complete with firmware that lets you use fallthru to ring -2! \o/), ARM, MIPS, or what? This is a question I've no idea how to answer.
Also, heh, I'm reminded of this:
1. Search Shodan for JAWS/1.0
2. Take one of the results, go to the IP[:port], append "/shell?" and a command, eg "/shell?ls"
3. Try running "whoami"
4. Go back and look at the number of results
5. Visit the IPs normally, and learn that these are DVRs, for security cameras; alternate between dying inside and reattaching your jaw.
But... why?
Instead, you can safely download one of the top wallpaper torrent package on Pirate Bay and get thousands of good quality wallpapers.
It's like me trying to fix my own car just for the sake of knowing how to fix my own car. Nope. No thanks. I'll take it to the garage when it's broken.
For most people I would recommend an iPad or a smartphone.
I had more or less the same issue (except things still booted) with my parents about 5 or 6 years ago. In a move I thought was insane, I put them on Xubuntu. I moved them to Mint for a while, but they are back to Xubuntu. It's my preferred distro, and the Ubuntu base (for good support) and XFCE (Windows familiarity) made me comfortable it was Mom and Dad proof. Aside from showing them where things are, there have been zero problems. Turns out that Linux is just as good for email, web browsing, Youtube, and solitare.
I haven't used Lightroom, but how does (say) RawTherapee compare?
My advice to the OP is to tell them to buy a Mac, get Apple Care and let Apple Genius Bar deal with it.
This is just plain false. I used AfterShot Pro and I think it's better than Lightroom. The only reason that I switched back to Darktable is because I don't want to locked in the proprietary software.
I ended up buying her a second-hand MacMini for 110€ more than 2 years ago. Old enough that it still was a PowerPC version. It still works very well, never needed to fix something, it is fast enough for her use cases (e-mail, digital camera, some internet surfing), and she loves it. If things get messed up on OS X they do that in a "user friendly" way, and she (before being mostly annoyed by computers) has started to become quite proud if she can fix such minor issues by herself, or with only little guidance. I'd say she acquired some general computer literacy through using OS X, but not through using either Linux or Windows. She now likes Steve Jobs.
Give them a Mint with MATE or XFCE; closer to Windows XP than anything else out there. Ublock + Chrome, make sure unattended upgrades are running and they are good to go.
You may want to add a dyndns entry and an ssh running with key-only auth, just in case you need to fix anything remotely for them.
Of course, in this case we're trying to protect people from themselves rather than the outside world, but still...
My father complained of virus and malwares on his computer.
I came home, formatted his hard drive and re-installed windows.
I go to eat lunch with my mother in the kitchen, a few minutes later I hear "[baby], I have a virus on my computer!". WHAT?
The first thing he did was to google for "chrome" on internet explorer and use the first result. The first result is a google ads for a malware containing chrome. Had to reformat his computer one more time. I think that's the moment where he got it.
For whatever reason, the web got to this point where non-technical people get infected within minutes, whatever advertising revenue is lost by content creators isn't worth my headaches providing tech support to family members and friends.
Is google being used as a generic verb here, in relation to Internet Explorer's default search engine?
I bought the cheap one (Lenovo) sometime ago. It has a good battery life, very lightweight and compact. I have seen the same being used by many people (in the same category). It is the most trouble free and productive piece of material there is. Ignore all these security software and Linux etc. Just hookup uBlock and Ghostery into the user's Google Chrome account and you're done.
Indeed, a couple of weeks ago when she thought she'd killed it because she'd fallen for clickbait that then said she had viruses on the computer, she was pleasantly surprised that powering it up again showed it was fine. For the £220 it cost, it was money well spent - she can do what she needs/wants to online without issues, and TBH I think that a LOT of "normal computer use" people would be better off with one rather than the PC they think they need (usually when asked it turns out that internet and email with the odd bit of word processing and printing is what people do).
Ideally for my mom ChromeOS device would be ideal. For my dad it would be not enough as it seems in your case. Maintaining my parents computer is something that always gets back to me. Now I am also living few hours worth of travel from them so it is even less convenient.
Older computer couldn't handle Ubuntu of the time. So always something was not working correctly. Updates on every system are constant source of headaches. My dad got used, but much more powerful machine. I installed Windows 10 for them thinking that Windows is now better and that with perpetual updates it will be out of trouble for me. I installed also Chrome Remote Desktop for service. My dad preferred Linux experience. I hoped that he just needs to get used to it. He was happy with Windows Store for a while, until few of the games he enjoyed playing failed in strange ways. It would not be that bad, but updates on Windows 10 are huge and with 20-30GB free space left after installation it does not update anymore. It only downloads the update, tries to update and fails - on every reboot. My dad bought an external HDD so probably it could be resolved. However he still would like to have Linux in there - old computer was very slow, but it did not fail in such magical ways. For now I plan to install Ubuntu for him and see how it will behave.
For my own learning experience and a bit of enjoyment I started working on my own Linux distribution. The most important thing for me is to have hassle-free updates like on Chromebook. I prepared squashfs image with Firefox and intend to have two partition scheme for rootfs. Updates would be then just download and restart away - completely automatic and in case of failure you would still have previous working image. I could test the image locally and optimize it for fun and profit. For now I base it on Gentoo to build lean system in a similar fashion to ChromeOS build.
[slight EDIT]