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Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?

#41

Post by knz »

davio wrote: post #24

After my mom got scammed online, I had "the talk" with my parents and we agreed that they would just use iPads and iPhones. 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 voi…

> 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.

Re: Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?

#42

Post by webwanderings »

Chromebook.

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.

Re: Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?

#43

Post by lucaspiller »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #32

tldr: Linux. 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, t…

This is what I did. Originally my parents were on Xubuntu, then I gave them an old Mac a few years ago, and now they are back on Linux Mint. My dad had no issues switching from iPhoto to Shotwell.

Re: Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?

#44

Post by ralphc »

falcolas wrote: post #34
Raphmedia wrote: post #26

I am the opposite of most comments here. Don't stupid her away to a mobile device. 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 i…

This assumes an interest, willingness, and time to learn. For better or worse, not everyone can/wants to become an expert in managing these buggy and vulnerable messes we call general purpose computers. 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 peo…

It's also assuming you live close enough to your parents that you can go over and physically revive a bricked computer.

Re: Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?

#45

Post by throwawaywxc »

EnderMB wrote: post #22

In my experience, don't. Offer them your best solution for a novice user, which for me is usually an up-to-date machine with an ad blocker, and make sure that you're open for 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.

This is good advice in principle but my parents are from a different world they grew up in a world without fridges, TVs or electronics.

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.

Re: Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?

#46

Post by hawski »

I am currently working on experimental Linux distribution for my parents that would be a bit ChromeOS-like.

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]

Re: Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?

#47

Post by breatheoften »

I think we are doing a disservice if we restrict this question to only refer to the standard malware/technological attacks. The real space for risk to our parents goes beyond damage to the computer or identity theft. There's some seriously weird content on the internet -- and some seriously strange ways it can interact with our parents aging brains.

I had an "oh shit" moment when my mom described a website that added automated popups over a text editor field -- as she typed it would periodically throw up a pop up with encouraging commentary and editing advice "good idea, can you elaborate" etc -- and it took her a long time to realize that the intellectual/emotional support she was feeling wasn't actually coming from anywhere ... she also got severely addicted to the political campaigns and facebook -- and ended up with a news feed that absolutely barraged her with a constant stream of fake political news stories ... got her down from her 4-6 hours per day of internet usage but it was so fast -- really scary stuff.

Re: Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?

#48

Post by johngalt »

Here are your options:

Revoke local admin privileges. It will stop a lot of the click-click to install bullshit, but it also means you will get a lot of calls about "access denied" whenever they want to update an app that needs admin rights. Give them an admin account to install/update software separate from their normal account.

Simplify the device by going tablet/chromebook. Probably means you will get a lot of questions regarding how to use/setup the new OS.

Shorten the loop on backup/rebuild and let them hit the iceberg. Good backups and fast imaging with drivers pre-loaded can make cleanup a lot easier/faster.

Re: Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?

#49

Post by djaychela »

webwanderings wrote: post #42

Chromebook. 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.

Very similar here. Got a Chromebase for my Mum (77) who has previously had an original iMac (she loved) and a Windows 7 PC (which she tolerated). Both iMac and PC had issues, and I'd often have to fix stuff. There was a bit of a learning curve for her (cloud print is a mystery to her, not helped by it breaking about 2 weeks in and needing a powerwash to sort that), and she couldn't have Skype on it which was the one initial sticking point, but since her getting going with it I've not had any issues.

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).

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