Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet? • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by bpc9 » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 9:47 PM UTC

An interesting question. I haven't had to do any of this for my folks, but i'd probably do something like the following:

-Setup a network and computers that I can admin remotely. Probably Ubiquiti Unifi gear (great wifi APs, powerful router with DPI / firewall, where I have admin access from my Unifi Controller install. Then I could handle all network troubleshooting remotely, unless their ISP is down or hardware has physically failed (unlikely with the ubiquiti gear)

-Look at something like OpenDNS personal configured on the gateway to help protect against malicious stuff in browser

-Set up any Desktop PC to run a hypervisor, and keep the OS they use as a VM that I could access and administer remotely, and that I could quickly reset to a known-working state.

-Have them use gdrive / dropbox / onedrive to keep documents backed up and accessible across machines

-For laptop / portable, see if I could get them to use chromebooks, or I'd need to replicate the VM setup from the desktop PCs

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

#82

Post by Florin_Andrei » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 9:57 PM UTC

> 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.

Show him one of those videos with deep-sea fish that use a luminescent lure to eat smaller fish. The pop-up is the lure. The small fish is him. The Internet is like the deep sea, and it's full of lures like that.

One simple criterion I give non-technical people: if it's unsolicited, it's hostile. End of story. No exceptions.

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

#83

Post by chejazi » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 10:02 PM UTC

Maybe replace his pc with an android powered device like http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=101695486

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

#84

Post by GFischer » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 10:03 PM UTC

chejazi wrote: post #83

Maybe replace his pc with an android powered device like http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=101695486

Unfortunately Android has its own malware :( and plenty of sites redirect to the Play Store.

I've seen Android phones constantly opening popups.

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

#85

Post by perakojotgenije » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

Use Linux. If he only uses his computer for browsing the Internet and editing photos linux mint (mate or cinnamon) will do fine. Show him how to use darktable instead of lightroom and that's it. No more problems.

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

#86

Post by fredgrott » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 10:07 PM UTC

rwhitman wrote: post #66

My mom has had various Windows PCs since the late 90's. About every 3 to 6 months or so I get a call that it's "stopped working" and has either locked up completely or is moving at a crawl. Nearly every time it takes me hours if not days to do a bunch of scans, install updates and purge whatever garbage has been installed by various malware that she's somehow managed to find. I've done more than a few clean wipes, bo…

or if they use MS Windows make them switch browsers to Google's Chrome

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

#87

Post by walrus01 » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 10:08 PM UTC

give them a desktop that is basically xubuntu amd64 (xfce4 desktop on xorg) + firefox + chrome, and then install all of the best adblock extensions in both browsers. Even the most clueless parents can't successfully download and run windows binary malware/ransomeware/viruses on that.

the xfce4 GUI is close enough to traditional windows98/windows2000/winXP models that most older non technical users have no problem with it.

the best thing for non technical users/older users/ignorant users is to give them the closest approximation to a thin terminal web browser, whether it is a linux desktop or a chromebook type thing.

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

#88

Post by jff » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 10:12 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #64

nickcw wrote: post #20

How about a Chromebook? 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.

I got my mom a Chromebook. It's the most successful computing experience so far, but I was quite surprised by a few things. 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…

> 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

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.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 10:14 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by peterwwillis » Tue, Nov 08, 2016, 10:14 PM UTC

Linux? Or a Chromebook.

They'll only be able to do like, two things with it, but at least Google has tools that replace most office-type apps. I'm going to say Chromebook is the slower but simpler solution.