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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.
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.
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.