Ask HN: Remotely helping elderly parents?
I want to help my elderly parents with their computer, but as I live far away, this needs to be done remotely (general stuff, paying bills, etc..)
I've seen some solutions, such as Team viewer. However I'm bit concerned about the security side.
If you have same situation, what is your solution?
72 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadI’ve never used a chromebook, but I imagine it would work as well.
Troubleshooting is usually just turn it off and on or take it to Apple store and get it fixed or get a new one. The new screen sharing feature is nice too because now you can show them where items in the menus are and whatnot.
For the others, unless they're really close or really desperate, I tell them that I haven't used Windows in many years (which is pretty much true, other than testing sites and so on to make sure they work in Windows browsers), so I can't really give them good advice.
There's one relative that uses Linux, but he doesn't generally need my help. Heh.
I thought the direct-manipulation interface would work for him, but experience says that in his case a traditional mouse pointer and an explicit "click" action gives less trouble.
YMMV, of course.
I understand why these products have been designed this way but I don't think the people who make them understand how badly they are designed for some people. I am a web dev and, imo, a lot of this comes from ways to make your app "look cool" on mobile. Add some buttons, make your app a bit longer vertically...it isn't the end of the world.
I will say though, they find tablets far easier than computers. Tablets present a very simple interface of things to do. Computers seem more complicated (ironically, you see this with kids today even young adults in their early 20s...they have no idea how computers actually work, and often don't understand anything beyond...click this, and app opens). Both hate phones, they can use them but they feel uncomfortable using them.
On the OP, you just have to take stuff over. If you are paying bills or whatever, you should just do it yourself. It will save you time.
RustDesk (yes, remote IT software written in Rust) is one option I hear a lot about.
https://rustdesk.com/
https://www.joinhonor.com/meet/engineering
I feel that team viewer's pricing is a bit expensive for this use case.
imho quite a good business model - builds up good-will/recognition, and then if anybody is asked what to buy for "remote desktop at work", it'll get a mention.
I only use it to assist my parent and don't really use it much. but they will pop up the message and saying they have detected business usage with my account. And then disconnect after 5 minutes.
In they're on Win10, there's "Quick Assist" baked in - which removed the hurdle of getting them to download and install something, before you can see exactly what they're doing.
Experimenting with other people having to do some of the steps (eg elevated permissions) is extremely tedious and far slower than you doing it on your own and then just telling them the correct answer which just magically works as far they are concerned. This also tends to be less stressful for everybody involved.
For windows and Android, VMs are the right tool as you can get the exact version right. iDevice VMs are possible but not worth it, a physical device is easiest. Fortunately even fairly old hardware runs the on-the-run OS version.
edit: clarity in second sentence
Hard to overemphasize this aspect. I would even add this to the localization level, as some menus and even keymaps differences could turn a simple task into madness!
Also, have limitless patience and wisdom to postpone some stubborn task for next, hopefully more relaxed time. Better yet set things up in person, if possible ahead of time, to avoid all the unnecessary annoyance.
This all assumes the receiving side indeed wants this type of assistance, as too often people in age may prefer to rely upon their time-provem and familiar ways to deal with tasks.
If they use a desktop computer, replace it with a decommissioned desktop server or a workstation with ipmi/idrac/iLO: you can do most remote management through it (including power cycle and os install/reinstall).
You can password-protect access to it and you'll have to setup a vpn connection to be able to access it.
It's really the bes you can do, albeit a bit expensive.
Their computers and mine are connected in the same ZeroTier network. I SSH to their computer and connect to VNC over an SSH tunnel. VNC is only bound to 127.0.0.1 so nobody on the network will be able to access it.
Perhaps I could have skipped the SSH part of it since ZeroTier should have covered the network security, but I also wanted an easy way to run commands too.
It's a couple steps to get connected, but it works well.
The VPN will let you RDP or SSH/VNC into their machines for remote manitenance. Since it gives you access to their entire LAN, this has the bonus of you being able to access and configure other devices like security cameras/etc.
If security is less of a priority there are simpler options other commenters have discussed like Chrome RD, Teamviewer, etc.
Consider having back up options -- if they have an iPhone or tablet, remember they can always point the computer at the screen as a last minute option.
I have Ubuntu and Windows 8.1 at home.
I've now got a shared google account on my Chromebook and their computer, Chrome Remote Desktop is installed on their PC and I have the PIN, with that I can just go to remotedesktop.google.com (on the shared account) and join their computer whenever they ask for help.
I was originally planning to use the system where they generate a code first, but they're nowhere near the technical level for that to not become a nightmare quickly, so now it's just flat remote desktop.
Not exact same situation, but the solution was along the lines of setting things up for the remote desktop.
First I configured the router for remote access. This step was the least secure. The objective was to set up port-forwarding for SSH. Once the tunnel is configured, the remote admin acccess on the router is no longer needed.
Then set up an SSH server the and remote desktop. In my case the remote OS was Ubuntu, so it was relatively straightforward, but did involve some typing/copypasting.
Once the remote desktop was up, the rest is just use it on-demand as needed.
This approach could likely be made more simpler, but the router part may still be needed, and in my experience this was the most difficult and critical task to clear remotely.
I spent too many times on the phone hearing complaints like "it just put up a error message that said 'no'" etc that this is much easier. No more asking what the error actually said etc.
Reliable, and I mostly trust (for better or worse) google to get security right.