Ask Slashdot: What To Tell Non-Tech Savvy Family About Malware?

First time accepted submitter veganboyjosh writes "I got an instant message from an uncle the other day, asking me what was in the link I sent him. I hadn't sent him a link so I figured that his account had been hacked and he'd received a malicious link from some bot address with my name in the 'From' box. This was confirmed when he told me the address the link had come from. When I tried explaining what the link was, that his account had been hacked, and that he should change the password to his @aol.com email account, his response was 'No, I think your account was hacked, since the email came from you.' I went over it again, with a real-life analog of someone calling him on the phone and pretending to be me, but I'm not sure if that sunk in or not. This uncle is far from tech savvy. He's in his 60s, and uses Facebook several times a week. He knows I'm online much more and kind of know my way around. After his initial response, I didn't have it in me to get into the whole 'Never click a link from an unfamiliar email address' bit; to him, this wasn't an unfamiliar email address, it was mine. How do I explain this to him, and what else should I feel responsible for telling him?"

Comments

Think up a meatspace analogy

[The MAZZTer]

In this case, let's say your uncle mails his letters by leaving them in his mailbox (I think some places let you do this) for the mailman to pick up. Now let's say a shady guy comes along and copies the names of people your uncle is mailing letters to, including yours, then sends him a letter purportedly from you asking him to loan you money by wiring it to a specific bank account or whatever.

Your NAME was involved but you had nothing to do with it, and the scammer found out your name from him.

Re:Think up a meatspace analogy

[houghi]

With email, I also always use the snail-mail analogy.
Everybody can send your name on an envelope.
Everybody can write my name on the back.
There is no way of telling where it was then send from, except the country where the person put it in the mailbox.

That will help most of the time (some people just don't WANT to understand), yet I can go further:
Email is like a postcard, everybody can read it. If you encrypt it, it is like an envelope.

An email has two parts. The part before the @ and the part after it.
The last part is the address. Street, and city/country. The part before it is your mailbox. It can have your name, but can also be a mailbox or anything that you put on the mailbox.

Your email program puts it in the mailbox. That is emptied by the post people. Then it si put in trucks to the postal dispatch. That will sort it and send it with a lot of others to another dispatch, where it will be sorted again and given to the postman. He will put it then in your mailbox.
So it is not like a fax where the machine speaks directly to another machine. It takes a lot of steps and on all those steps there can be a delay. That is the reason your email might not arrive in the 7 seconds you have been waiting for.

Just make shit up

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. Show him a segment in the e-mail header and say that's proof his shit was hacked. He won't know the difference anyway.

Tagged as funny, but makes a point.

[mark-t]

Really, I can't think oi a good reason to presume that either account was actually hacked. What's evidently happened, however, is that both parties have had their email addresses harvested, using one (falsely) as a sender and the other as recipient.

Nothing

[Andy Prough]

Get them a Chromebook and save $1200+ off the price of the Mac and be done with it.

Re:Fake one yourself.

[toygeek]

I did this once to prove the point to my wife. I made up some ridiculous email and then called her and asked her if she got it. She had. When I told her it was from ME, she finally got the point. The email was telling her she was a winner of free tickets to a concert for an artist that hasn't performed in a VERY long time. And I didn't have to telnet into a server to do it. I just set up my mail program.

Get Rid of Windows and Install Linux

[RudyHartmann]

My dad got infected by some malware a while back. He had WinXP Pro. My brothers tried to help him to no avail. He doesn't do well with keeping his antivrus and malware stuff updated. The old guy also does stuff I've told him not to do too. So he got this malware infection that told him that the FBI had locked his computer and to send $200 to a site to unlock it. He freaked out. So I installed Linux Mint 13 KDE 32-bit on his computer. He hasn't had to worry since. He likes it because its also faster. My family thinks I'm free tech support and I was getting real tired of fixing their installations. Now my brothers and uncle have installed Mint also. Life is much simpler for me now. :-)

Re:Nothing

[stenvar]

In my experience, switching people from Windows to Linux is a lot less work than switching them from Windows to Mac: pretty as it is, the Mac has just too many annoying differences and annoying little usability problems. My parents could never get used to global menus on the Mac, for example. And remote system management on the Mac is also harder (the best you can do is try and set up remote desktop access). And, of course, there is the obvious advantage that people using Linux can continue to use the hardware they are already used to.

(Besides, you seem to be off your Apple marketing script: I thought the party line among Mac folks was that Mac is UNIX but Linux is not.)