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Got Spyware? Throw out the Computer!
geeber writes "The New York Times (reg. required) has an article about a new response to spyware - throw out the computer and buy a new one. The notion is new computers can be had for $400 so it's a cost effective and 'rational response.'" From the article: "While no figures are available on the ranks of those jettisoning their PC's, the scourge of unwanted software is widely felt. This month the Pew group published a study in which 43 percent of the 2,001 adult Internet users polled said they had been confronted with spyware or adware, collectively known as malware. Forty-eight percent said they had stopped visiting Web sites that might deposit unwanted programs on their PC's.
Moreover, 68 percent said they had had computer trouble in the last year consistent with the problems caused by spyware or adware, though 60 percent of those were unsure of the problems' origins. Twenty percent of those who tried to fix the problem said it had not been solved; among those who spent money seeking a remedy, the average outlay was $129."
Surely you could at least just reformat the harddrive?
Throwing out the whole PC seems a bit excessive..
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
...that once you throw out that old PC, remember to replace it with a Macintosh. Problem solved.
Reminder: Apple owns 1/255th of the internet.
Stop using IE and switch to Firefox.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
Before the subject gets taken out of context, let me explain. Reading the article, almost all the examples given are "my 4 year old Dell" or "my 4 year old HP." Four whole years ago, Windows ME was the most recent hunk of junk to come out of Redmond, so it wouldn't surprise me if all these repeat infections are occuring on Win9x systems. Also, machines of that era generally shipped with 64 or 128mb of RAM.
As long as the computers are running Win9x, they will undoubtedly become reinfected, as Microsoft will not update Internet Explorer with the same security level as it has with WinXP SP2. Thus, the only real way to ensure enough protection is to upgrade the operating system to the more secure XP. The upgrade itself costs on average $109, but it would run too slow to be usable on 64 or 128mb memory. So the memory should be upgraded as well, to a minimum of 256mb. At my shop, the labor to install everything would end up around $100. So you're looking at $300 to secure a 4 year old machine while maintaining usability. At that point, wouldn't it make more sense just to format the old machine, and use it as a dedicated word processor, and not let it touch the internet, while all Internet tasks are done on a new, faster, more secure system?
The article doesn't make it clear, but it seems the focus is those people still running on legacy hardware and software, accessing modern services online. Legacy software is far more easily infected than newer systems protected by an updated anti-virus and service pack 2. The article is not saying to throw out your 6 month old Dell and buy the same thing again, or even a 1 or 2 year old system.
Credentials: I've worked in a computer shop cleaning viruses and spyware for the past 4 years. Since the introduction of XP SP2, I've seen a dramatic decrease in repeat customers with re-infections once a machine is properly cleaned, updated, and patched. (With the exception of those who's kids download Kazaa as soon as they get the machine home, despite numerous warnings).
boxes = multiple (cardboard, etc) boxes.
boxen = multiple (*nix) computers
dont be a dolt, if your gonna correct somebody, know what your talking about.
no, im not new here.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/boxen.html
space is pretty cool.
Granted, I expect you to ignore me since you profit from people not knowing about this option...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
$129 is the upgrade price for Tiger
Nope. There is no "upgrade" pricing for Tiger. Your $129 gets you the whole OS.
Try installing it on a computer that didn't come with some version of MacOS to begin with.
Umm... Every Macintosh comes with the current version of Mac OS as of the date of its manufacture. Are you trying to install it on some machine that didn't come from Apple?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Most of time you can shift-click and select run-as on the installer. (also on 'windows update' and 'computer management'). If you need to do more complicated stuff you're ofcourse not a 'normal user' and should run as admin like you do.
1) Go to the HP site and download the freakin drivers.
2) Go to Fry's or online and buy a freakin NAT router/firewall for like $20. This will block the worms until you can get the updates installed.
You're wrong. $129 is the full price for Tiger, not the upgrade price. I've installed the retail box Tiger on a blank, unformatted hard drive. No problems. Also worth mentioning is that Tiger has no "activation" requirements, so you can install that $129 OS on all the machines in your household. (Yes, this violates copyright, but that's beside the point -- and Apple does offer a discounted "family pack" as well.) With XP you have to buy multiple copies of the OS for multiple machines, and there is no "family pack" option.
Doesn't this kind of aggravate the environmental problem that simply 'throwing out' old PCs poses? Whoever wrote TFA should think a little more before publishing such irresponsible drivel.
It's amazing how many programs that still haven't clued in that installing account is not always identical to user account.
Word of cheer(!) to the would-be switchers: Macs have this problem too.
The installer of MacOS is assumed to be admin, the first acct created. For a single user machine the question is, should Joe-six-pack then make himself a non-admin acct. for everyday use, does he know how, and could he be bothered?
Mac application installers can be just as stupid as Windows. Apple have provided an installer application, which with admin password will install all parts of an app. with proper permissions in all the necessary parts of the filesystem, without needing to log out and back. Maybe one third of apps use this. About a third are "drag'n drop", so they will probably be executable by other users, but are owned by with permissions of the current user. The remainder are a ragtag bunch of leftovers from Classic MacOS with all sorts of perverse behaviour.
I have just been thru an exercise of installing copy protected software with machine hardware dependent keys, requiring admin authority, which must then be transmuted to a generic non-admin acct in a student lab. Several times I wondered if Windows would make my task any easier. We're looking more closely at open source now with OS-X, but worried to find a lot of so-called open source apps in the multi-media field are being developed to run primarily on Windows OS.
"What about the times when you install a stupid program (Warcraft III comes to mind) that saves games in a dir that only an admin can access (if installed as admin)?"
:)
Just set the NTFS permissions on that file/folder/branch so the file(s) can be written by the "Users" group. Depending on the complexity of the program, who else needs to use it, and such, you can even lock it down against modification of the stuff that shouldn't change (to, e.g., to protect against virus infection of EXE files). I do this all the time, although it's usually to make some CAD program or some such work, and not to play games.
It's programs that do goofy, undocumented things like trying to install DLLs into the C:\WINDOWS directory every time they're run (no, I'm not making that up) that really irritate me.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I guess it's funny even for who doesn't know Monty Python :)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F