Safe Computing For the Elderly?

wingspan asks: "My 80-year old mother is insisting on using this new fangled thing called the Internet for banking and brokerage. I researched ways for her to perform those activities safely. The typical suggestions, from organizations such as BITS [pdf], include installing anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam, anti-adware, browser toolbar, and a personal firewall. The suggestions also include not clicking on links, verifying security certificates (If it has a cert, it must be a good site!), making sure the address begins with 'https://' regularly updating the security software and patching all other software, and regularly changing passwords. Personally, I think the technical suggestions are too Windows-centric, too costly, and leave too much of an attack surface. The non-technical suggestions are simply too much to ask of the elderly. What do you think? Is it possible for an elderly person to safely perform Internet banking and brokerage? If so, what system should they have, how should it be configured and maintained, and how much of the security should depend with the elderly user?"

Comments

Get her on Linux

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I've had great success getting technically incompetent people to avoid the evils of the Internet by introducing them to Linux.

They hate the bootup sequence text and the weird program names, so they quit using computers altogether and get back to using ATMs.

This may or may not be what you are trying to accomplish with your grandma.

Re:Get her on Linux

[LiquidCoooled]

To get your grandma up and running without any trouble, just update your repositories:

deb http://silver.surfer.com/grandma/ grandparents human

Then run your updates:

sudo apt-get update perspective-on-life

And finally, install the required old person packages (debian sarge includes a larger list, see here for more):

sudo apt-get install falseteeth slippers cardigan

Once you have done this, logout of your grandma and when you bring her back online she will be ready for action.

Re:Get her on Linux

[finkployd]

Once you have done this, logout of your grandma

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in the "most disturbing thing ever uttered on slashdot" category.

Finkployd