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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?"
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.
I would add to this: only use bookmarks to navigate the web instead of typing in addresses. Especially if the person has never used a keyboard before(or hasn't in a long while) and may have a bit of trouble reading the address bar accurately. One mistaken keystroke could send you right to a phisher/camper's site. Plus, if you only navigate to known trustworthy sites, your chances of getting spyware/virus etc. are greatly reduced.
Monstar L
First of all, go with something *you* are comfortable with, because you're going to be the first person she calls in the event of an emergency.
Otherwise, considering going Apple. Sure some will decry the proprietary aspects, but it's an *easy* system to use, and with Applecare she will have a years worth of tech support from someone who is inside the US of A if you're not availabe.
My 76 yo Mom has a Powerbook for her internet related stuff, and a Winbook, because she was a long time Windows user and her embroidery stuff runs only on Windows (it's tied to a Bernina, who offers no Mac port of their software).
I think if she hadn't been into the sewing thing we could have gone straight Mac. She understands too, that if she needs to go on the internet for any reason with the WB, she uses "that other account you set up for me" (i.e. non-Admin), cause it's safer.
FWIW, the PB has been just fine for 3 years, the WB has had problems within 3 months of purchase, YMMV.
Good luck, whatever you do.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
"As you get older you lose your mental faculties. That's not patronizing - it's what happens."
Sometimes true, however I once had opportunity over several weeks to play a Monk in his late eighties at chess, a game at which I have some talent. I've never been so completelly destroyed in chess so many times in a row, his abilities were fearsome.
Yet he seemed absent minded, it was all very puzzling.
Chess skill is largely a basis of pattern recognition and experience, prodigies aside. One can be brilliant at chess by sheer dint of having played thousands and thousands of games and be mediocre at everything else in life. Adrian de Groot famously [in the chess world, at least] found that Grandmasters are far better than amateurs at memorizing real gameplay positions on a board, but are just as poor as amateurs with nonsense positions [three white bishops all on black squares, kings adjacent, general random piece placement]. This has led heavily to the adoption of the 'pattern recognition' mode of thought.
Your monk, then, may have just been very, very, experienced, in spite of his old age, and thus fearsome. Hell, look at Viktor Kortchnoi.
That said, though, I absolutely believe there are some very, very, sharp elderly men and women out there. As well as some very, very, strong ones, to dispel another myth. The key is using what you have -- intelligence, strength -- and never giving it a chance to slip into senility.
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.