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Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?

#111

Post by mceachen »

chrisdsaldivar wrote: post #51

Just yesterday my mom called me asking me to check the logged in devices list on her email. She hasn’t been able to login and found out it had been hacked so she had to reset her password. I logged all the devices out and finally got her to stop using her last name as her password and we changed all of her passwords. So, after years of my sister and me trying to get her to have proper passwords it took her getting ha…

I couldn't get my Dad off Windows, even though he kept getting malware and viruses and ask his helpdesk (me) to repair the damage (which meant hours of formatting and reinstalling windows and N apps and ...). Inertia and "but this is the way I do it" are hard to fight.

FWIW, if you're running Google Apps for your family email, you can require a certain level of password quality, and force-reset the offending passwords.

Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?

#112

Post by RyJones »

discordance wrote: post #91
barbecue_sauce wrote: post #39

Keep them offline. Get them smartphones, preferably iOS. Educate them about scams. My parents still conduct the majority of their personal business offline, and though I have scoffed at this in the past, it makes more sense for them and also keeps them safe. Their bills come in the mail, and its not uncommon for them to go to a department store and pay the bill for that chain's credit card in person. They meet with t…

After countless majestic infections in his laptop, restricting my dad to only using a large iPad pro (with a keyboard) has saved me countless hours of maintenance.

This was my attempted solution. It works ok, but my father falls for just about every phone scam.

Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?

#113

Post by mr_toad »

defen wrote: post #78
maxxxxx wrote: post #33

Also tell them about phone scams. Over the last year I have received several very convincing phone calls and voice messages from people pretending to be the IRS or cops. It takes a lot of willpower to convince yourself that they are scams. A lot of scams can be stopped if you consult with someone before sending actual money. I think it's important to tell your parents that before they give anybody any money or accoun…

My in-laws got hit by an absolutely ridiculous phone scam. Basically some guy called and said "Hey this is Apple, this is an emergency, your iCloud got hacked, you need to install this remote desktop software and give me your credit card info so I can fix it for you". They are smart people but they still fell for it. So, the advice we gave them was that no organization is going to use a phone call to deliver importan…

> ask for a call-back number

Better to just call their main support line. Most likely they’ll never have heard of ‘some guy’ and they’ll tell you your iCloud is just fine.

Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?

#114

Post by rmetzler »

altharaz wrote: post #103

My recipe is AdBlocks + automated updates enabled + firewall enabled + desktop shortcut for web browser + regular antimalware check. Regarding phishing, I set them up with a GMail account and their filter is quite good against this. So far, not anything bad happened, some minor malware were installed through malicious web browser extensions, but no financial damage or identity theft.

One thing I would like to add: let them set long passwords [0], different ones for each service and write them down in a dedicated notebook.

[0]: https://xkcd.com/936/

Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?

#115

Post by nickjj »

1. Firefox

2. U-block origin

3. Let them know they shouldn't ever download files from an email (even from relatives, because realistically non-technical people aren't sending each other files over email and it's likely one of them has malware that is trying to spread)

4. Disable their mic / webcam (they are not going to use it anyways)

The 4th point isn't so much to prevent malware, but it's to protect their privacy in case they somehow get compromised.

Since I've done all of the above, I haven't had to format a parent's machine due to a virus or malware. They run Windows too.

Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?

#116

Post by baroffoos »

mceachen wrote: post #109
macns wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is CoW?

Copy on Write, presumably to save them from crypto-locking ransomware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptoLocker

Its the backups that save you from crypto malware.

Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?

#117

Post by cpncrunch »

heywire wrote: post #20
murkle wrote: post #18

Can recommend Chromebook from personal experience. Auto-updates painlessly. Probably worth getting one with touchscreen and ability to run Android Apps. I've just updated my mum's one to Acer Chromebook R11 CB5-132T (old one was no longer getting updates after c. 5 years)

Chromebooks are great, but there is certainly still some risk if extensions are enabled. My daughter was having problems with her Chromebook, and I found that a bunch of shady extensions had been installed (I had a flashback to the 90's and toolbars). Apparently they were masquerading as games and themes.

I think Chromebooks are about as safe as you can get these days. There is a limited amount of damage that can be done with extensions, especially now that they can only be installed via the chrome web store, and inline installations are blocked. AFAIK it's impossible to do stuff like steal credit cards or install a keylogger via an extension.

Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?

#118

Post by sent00001 »

shambolicfroli wrote: post #35
sent00001 wrote: post #2

Phishing is a big problem for non-technical users. Google's Phishing Quiz ( https://phishingquiz.withgoogle.com ) is a surprisingly good resource.

Is there a good simple way that someone nontechnical could become confident that withgoogle.com is a trustworthy domain?

Very good point. I actually got the link a while back from someone from Google. But what you're saying makes 100% sense! You wouldn't know unless there is a concrete method to verify ownership of the domain.

Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?

#119

Post by Endy »

Thankfully, my parents were technical back in the days of BASIC & CP/M.

So basically it comes down to making sure that the UI/UX they (and I tbh) like sticks over updates. As such, we've moved completely away from Firefox to Palemoon (with a "classical" theme), from Office & OpenOffice to LibreOffice, and to minimalist Windows theming to keep it looking like, well, Windows.

I use either uBlock or Adblock Latitude & Greasemonkey with the Aaklist setup, and Disconnect / Ghostery. They also have Avast! & MalwareBytes on their machines and I have a ClamAV client set up on a scheduled task.

As far as them getting phishing emails... they're not stupid. They've been seeing spam email since Prodigy and haven't fallen for more than one scam in that time (long story but it didn't hurt us monetarily). Oh, and if they're not sure, they ask me - or they search (using DuckDuckGo or Exalead, not Google) to figure out if it's real.

Re: Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?

#120

Post by themagician »

The best out of the box solution I’ve found is eero with eero plus subscription. It blocks ads at the router level as well as malware sites, phishing sites, certain downloads, etc..

It’s not perfect, but better than anything else I’ve ever used. Also comes with subscriptions to 1Password, Malwarebytes and Encrypt.me.

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