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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?"
Get them a mac and be done with it.
you've been compromised, and now you're spamming /.
Log into AOL's SMTP server with telnet and make an email that looks like it's coming from your uncle. Show him how easy it is to fake, and that the "to" field is actually incredibly untrustworthy.
...that'll a man will jump out of their screen and yell, "WHERE'S YOUR DAUGHTER?!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0wY4wIB5_4
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.
I don't see why you think his account has been hacked.
Someone simply sent him email with your address as the "From" address. Doing that is trivial, and spammers do it all the time.
Post your uncle's email address and your email address, and thousands of us here will send you email with your uncle's email address as the origin.
Go ahead, post both addresses. You can trust me. I'm "Anonymous Coward", and you've seen millions of articles from me which show my wide variety of expertise.
Are you sure it was your uncle who sent you the instant message?
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.
Explaining email issues can be very tricky, since there can be problems with authenticity at both ends of a one directional communication. For instance, perhaps your email host is owned, they can send messages as you. Alternately, the recipient's email host is poorly configured, and it's accepting mail with spoofed sources. It gets even more layered, when it you look at whether or not the sending MX is authoritative for the domain the message originates from, which is where SPF comes into play. Everyone who has a domain, whether it's used for sending email or not, should specify an SPF record (or TXT with appropriate content) specifying which servers can send mail, if any. Every mail server, besides not being configured to be a relay, needs to avoid accepting mail from senders using addresses only it should be authoritive for.
Tell him nothing else, just feel superior that you don't get malware. OR
You could point him to a website that has a simple explanation of how it is that you know for certain it is you know his machine is infected, instead of someone else's who has both your and his email addresses in it.
Or did it just spoof your name, and attach some made-up email address. In either case, tough to blame your uncle for "lack of sophistication". Anyone might have followed a link to "take a look at this hilarious clip" or whatever, under the circumstances, unless they were unusually observant and/or paranoid.
Why is he asking you for help? Just say "If you trust me enough to ask, trust me enough to accept my explanation."
Creating a non-administrator/root account for them should prevent the installation of most malware. DON'T give them the password.
And tell them that the Internet is like Mos Eisley: "It is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."
Keep an up-to-date firewall and virus scanner like Norton. Turn on automatic updating for the operating system. And for the security software.
Hope for the best.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Explain how to expand the e-mail header to show the senders full address ie. Josh
Then simply explain the whole "never talk to strangers" bit and make comparisons to tech where possible.
I mean, when you're mailing from maximizeyoursize@maleenhancement.com there are just predictably going to be misunderstandings.
I think this is mentioned, but nothing mentioned indicates either party was hacked. The from part of an email can be forged as easily as the from address on a piece of stationary. That email could have come from anywhere in the world and anyone. The only thing we can gather is that the spammer somehow connected the submitter's name with that of his uncle. It could have been either side, or a public mention of both addresses, or a third relative getting hacked that has both of you in their contact list. The raw headers *might* be able to tell you if it came from an aol email server but that still doesn't itself tell you who sent it.
I have similar problems with my family (usually my mid-60's parents). Funny thing is, they're not dumb. But about a year ago when I was explaining to my mom for the 40th time what a URL is and how to copy and paste it in your browser, when she (a 10+ year computer user) asked me what a "browser" is, I gave up. They spent their money on that machine and if they can't figure out how to use it properly, it's their own fault.
A person can ask for advice. They can act on it as they see fit. If your adult uncle ignores your advice, you are off the hook. Maybe you know what's best for him, but if he's asked you and doesn't believe you, there's nothing you can do. I know you wish you could help, but you can't. We sell computers to people who aren't IT admins with the implication that they don't need to be one in order to operate them. Sadly this isn't true, but it's beyond your duties as a nephew to try to disabuse him of this notion.
This answer is probably less than satisfactory, but the world is an imperfect place and our ability to change that is very limited.
Perhaps other Slashdotters have some Jedi mind tricks for you to try, but I'm not optimistic, based on personal experience.
I am not a crackpot.
You can never be too sure, especially since the submitter thinks his uncle has been compromised.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
Tell him that the "from" that shows up in emails is like the upper left corner of an envelope.
I could write a letter, address it, and in the upper left corner write
And you could mail the letter. And the letter might even be delivered. But that doesn't mean that the President really sent that letter. It just means that whoever sent it claimed to be someone else when they were sending it.
Get them a Chromebook and save $1200+ off the price of the Mac and be done with it.
You were more likely the one who was hacked. After all, if you were a hacker, and you had compromised someone's email, which would you do: send one email to the account you hacked, or send a bunch of emails to everyone in that account's contact list? Of course, neither of you have necessarily been hacked, but there has to be some way the hacker knew to claim it was from you. So the hacked account could belong to someone you both know. That would be a sneakier way of avoiding detection for a bit.
Just tell him email is very easy to forge. That's it.
You don't have to explain the technical details of exactly how it is forged, what headers are, how SMTP works, how malware mines personal data, or any of that. If he cared about the technical details, he'd read up on them, and then he wouldn't need you.
Keep it simple: "email is very easy to forge."
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
You did what you needed to do, you let them know they had a problem.
You are done.
It is not just non-tech savvy people that have this problem. My brother is, or so I thought, knowledgeable in the area of malware. One day I get a spam message sent from him, actually from his previous email address. I recognized that the message was also sent to quite a few people in his address book. After receiving a few more, I did a reply all to one of the messages, copied to his current email address and included a message that I hope you are not doing any banking or on-line shopping with that computer. His response was to send out a message to his entire address book asking people to set up their spam filters to ignore any messages from his old address.
I tried, I'm done.
The good news is that I now know of some juicy stocks that are going to really run up in price and three or four places where I can order some V1agra. Also, I was able to do all of my holiday shopping an a really great Russian sex toy shop. They even gift wrap! Everyone is going to be so surprised this year!
Again, you are done, move on.
You can tell a kid a hundred times that the stove is hot, he won't believe you until he burned his hand.
Tell him, if he chooses to ignore you, don't press on. You offered help, he declined, everything's fine. Sorry, but if ignorant people choose to reject the information they get from people who know more than them about the matter, you have to let the kid burn his hand.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Fix his computer for a fee.
Really, you could have just said, "my uncle uses AOL," and that would have explained everything.
Joking aside, why did you use the telephone analogy? It's email, a postal mail analogy would have been perfect: it's as if someone sent him a nasty letter and printed your address in the top-left corner of the envelope.
As for what to do with his PC ... well, if he's just the typical "Facebook and email" user, install Debian or something and rename the desktop icons ("Internet", "Email", etc.). I put Ubuntu on my mom's netbook and she pesters me no more often than she does about her Windows PC.
"What's malware?"
"You know how government officials tell you sweet things they'll do for you, so you vote for them, and suddenly you see your walled draining rapidly and all kinds of shit clogging up everything you do, and even after installing their 'fix', things keep running slower and slower and slower? Same thing but just on your computer."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This isn't "Malware". This isn't "Hacking". It's just Phishing.
Read this: http://www.securingthehuman.org/newsletters/ouch/issues/OUCH-201112_en.pdf
Explain that email was invented in the mid-70s and hasn't really changed that much. Security wasn't a factor back then, and its easy to write an email that appears to come from anyone.
If your uncle had been hacked, why would the attacker send him a malicious link?
My analogy is a letter with my name and address written in the return-address space. Does that guarantee that the letter's from me? Of course not, anybody could write that in if they knew my address, and all it takes to find my address is to look me up in the phone book.
As plain and obvious it seems to us tech nerds.. some people will just never get some of the tricks the spammers use like forged from addresses and no, you're not infected, don't click that link to install superantispyware 2013. If possible, take the PC/Laptop for an evening to "speed things up" put good anti-malware and antivirus on it, maybe make a clean image and a non-admin account if you can and expect the calls for when he screws it up again if you are his dedicated tech nerd.
And then, go one better, and explain to him that by using PGP authentication, you CAN ensure that emails are from who they say they are, assuming you've verified the key. Show him how easy this is to do with Enigmail. And then join the ranks of us who've been frustrated by the glazed eye look that comes upon doing so.
Having to explain tech to the tech-clueless is definitely among the activities in some of the lower circles of Hell. Sorry, there's no magic solution here.
This happened to a guy I know recently. I was suprised to learn that Yahoo! and Google have a place you can check your login history at. I was able to show this guy evidence that my theory was correct, after which he became much more cooperative about changing his password. FYI on Gmail and other services with oauth you should also clear all those sessions I would think. I dunno if AOL has this history feature, but it's more common than I would have thought. If he's connecting from ARIN block IPs and you find some unexplained APNIC IP in the history it's a pretty good indicator of a problem..
Most of the non tech savvy will end up hacked. This will be the perpetual state of any Windows box which doesn't have full time support of a corporate IT department or a tech savvy user between the chair and keyboard 100% of the time.
AOL is a problem as well. You shouldn't be trying to support AOL users. Refer them to the AOL tech support number.
If your uncle isn't asking you for help it's none of your business. Why should people rally against infections which don't affect them?
My Windows partition contains a copy of Borderlands 2 and nothing else. Antivirus and Windows updates can't protect you from zero day exploits, which means they are useless and should be turned off. Boot to another OS to browse the Internet.
I think the first thing to tell your uncle is that he should get his tech advice from a more tech savvy relative who doesn't automatically assume that a forged email is done by hacking someone's account.
It's bad, m'kay.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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. :-)
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
...Having to explain tech to the tech-clueless is definitely among the activities in some of the lower circles of Hell. Sorry, there's no magic solution here.
Sure there is. Stop teaching.
Absolutely shocking to me that the one solution that is the most obvious (a user actually educating themselves about the tool they rely on) is the one that has somehow now been deemed "magical" due to mass ignorance.
I say fuck 'em. They'll learn one way or another, or they'll give up trying and stop using computers. Either way, it's a win for the educated and/or self-inclined.
And no, I don't feel I'm asking a user to program Java when learning the basic 101 rules of online communication. It is that simple. Learn it.
I just tell them to stop watching porn, stop downloading movies, and stop clicking on links inside email. For most people, that probably equates to "don't use the internet" which is fine as far as I'm concerned.. If you want to use a tool without getting hurt, invest a little time and effort into learning how. If not, just accept the fact that you will magically have problems crop up here and there, sort of like a car that never gets its fluids checked.
The problem is, most people simply don't want to learn new things past the age of about 16, so trying to elaborate any more than that is pointless.
If he is in his 60's and using Facebook and AOL, abandon all hope. As others have said, if his "tech support" presumes that phishing is "malware", then his "tech support" needs tech support just like many lawyers need other lawyers... look it up.
I long ago ceased to help any family members with their online/computer problems if they run anything other than Linux/BSD, or if they think they should be providing massive amounts of personal info to the world via facebook or some stupid "family tree" site. People who insist on being dumb and reckless do not deserve help avoiding the consequences.
The company was a security firm for phishing. They said they sent phishing emails to clients to see if the employees fell for it.
I said,"That's a great way to find business. Spam the world with phishing emails, and people who fall for it, you tell them they need your product.". He laughed and said,"That's like if we did mechanic work and went out and wrecked into people's cars and told them.we could fix it". I think it is different. I think it is more like finding people susceptible to an illness and offering inoculations.
God spoke to me
I have only read 3 replies and can't be bothered to read the rest in true tradition so will simply offer up malwarebytes http://downloads.malwarebytes.org/mbam-download.php as one option. I find the free frisk will get rid of most (95.764% for the made up stats crew) crapware. TBH, the OP was a tad too long and I only got half way through.
How about, as in life, and on the internet, don't take candy from strangers?
YOU were hacked.
Mom, pop, don't do malware. It's the opposite of goodware. So just say no.
My buddy's dad is in his late 80's. Because the computer gave him tools he wanted to use (communication with a family out west, moving a whole lifetime of photographs, slides, 8mm and Super-8 movies going back over a hundred years into digital format, finding in mere seconds information that would have involved a trip to the library when he was a kid), my friend's dad learned how to operate a computer. And because he's the kind of man who does things properly, he took the trouble to learn how to stay safe on-line. His son, ironically, sounds a lot like your uncle. Put together a short PowerPoint presentation illustrating some of the bad stuff, teach him how to behave, and tell him to either get a brain or get off-line.
We live in a digital age. Uncle Dinosaur should learn to swim in it or leave his on-line business to people who are competent.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It has nothing to do with being tech savvy, smart, or old. This is the sort of news that people do NOT like hearing. You tell them their computer is infected and they get defensive because they don't want to hear they did something wrong. Even though we know it's very easy to get infected if you aren't paying attention and there are a lot of traps out there to get you, but most people do not know that.
And when you tell someone something they don't want to hear, what do they usually do? Yes, lash out at you in anger. Not unlike what the article person did, tried to turn it around and blame their friend.
Back in the early 90's, there was this local person that I did a bit a computer business with, so we knew each other decently. This one time I got a disk from him, and it was infected with the Stoned virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_(computer_virus). Well, it took me a bit to figure out what was going on, and that i infected a few other of my boot disks in the process (it was my first virus, how we never forget out first!). When i figured it all out and told him that I got a virus from him, he wigged out and swore that he never gave me a virus and blah blah blah. I was just warning him so he could check his disks, i wasn't blaming him for anything, yet his first reaction is to deny it happened.
You find this happens for most everything when there is a chance someone did something wrong.
Be seeing you...
Tell him to go look it up if he doesn't believe you - there's a wide scope of places/users with info similar enough to convince anyone. It's Never too Late to Educate. (I'm 62 & my only edge over him is 'computing' since 1985 - sure I know a lot more, but that's exposure to the digital world over a quarter-century plus. Even if he only started recently, it ain't age - it's NEWBIE. It's the Holiday Season - be kind to a newbie.)
Your logic seems a bit off here.
The usual scenario for hacked account spamming is as follows: Spammer takes control of account (either via phishing, malware, or more rarely social engineering) then sends spam message out to everyone on the account's contact list. It's a great way to spam since a) the people you are sending to are usually real people and b) they will be more likely to click through since the message is coming from someone they know.
What I have not seen before is a spammer gaining control an account, getting its contact list, then sending a *single* message to that very same account from someone on that contact list. What could possibly be the point when you can do the usual trick above? Spam is a numbers game for the most part, and what you're proposing has happened seems to be one of the worst possible ways to reach as many people as possible.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but just that it doesn't quite add up.
Yea, change your email password.
For email, it's actually really simple. What he sees in email headers (From, Subject, etc.) is the equivalent of the return address written in the top left corner of an envelope. There's absolutely nothing keeping you from putting false information there, and if he doesn't believe you ask him when's the last time he had to present identification to send a letter. What you're showing him instead is kind of like inspecting the cancellation mark on the stamp to determine that while the return address may say the White House, the letter was actually mailed from Portland, Oregon.
To give him an impression of the need to update, there are a few things to point out, and hopefully at least one will get through.
* First, among the most dangerous sites on the web these days are church websites - they're created as a volunteer effort by someone who may not even still be with the church (or who graduated HS and moved on in life). They're unmaintained. If they're infected, it may be a long time before someone even notices. In contrast, the "skeevy" sites like porn have a financial incentive to make sure their sites are safe.
* Second, once upon a time malware was written by spotty-faced geeks competing with each other for reputation. Those days are gone and have been gone for 20 years. These days malware is written by professional virus authors who do it for a living.
* Finally, show him the picture from http://www.deependresearch.org/2012/11/common-exploit-kits-2012-poster.html which shows a bunch of *commercially available* malware kits used to create new viruses and some of the security holes they target.
fencepost
just a little off
I told them my hourly rate and when they complained I sent them to http://www.geekinpink.com/
The women adore them and if it all works out the uncle will go to jail.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I'm surprised that no one's brought it up yet, but -- One of the most common spam email profiles that I get these days has the name of a Facebook friend in "From", my name in "Subject", and the body being just a single hyperlink. Pretty clearly, something is scooping up names of friends from Facebook (and recall email address is required there), so there's no need for any personal computer involved to be hacked. And I'm getting these things with the names of some friends I've never had any contact with except through Facebook, so it's easy to deduce that's the source. I would think.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
But in fact you can put anything you like in the From: field. Most people don't know that.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"I got an instant message from an uncle the other day, asking me what was in the link I sent him."
So he knew not to click the link, even though it was apparently from you. Uncle: 1
"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."
Massive assumption with no basis in fact. Nephew: -1
"This was confirmed when he told me the address the link had come from."
Confirmation bias. Nephew: -1
"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.'"
A fair response. Uncle: 1
"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."
If someone calls him on the phone and pretends to be you, that doesn't mean his phone has been "hacked". Nephew: -1
"This uncle is far from tech savvy."
So far we have Uncle: 2 Nephew: -3
"He's in his 60s, and uses Facebook several times a week."
That means he can't be tech savvy? Ageism: Nephew -1. Able to use Facebook: Uncle 1
"He knows I'm online much more and kind of know my way around."
Apparently not, though.
"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"
He didn't click the link.
"How do I explain this to him, and what else should I feel responsible for telling him?"
Call him, tell him he's doing fine and he's more tech savvy than his Nephew.
The problem with that attitude is that their lack of knowledge harms you too. They may share a network with you, which now has a compromised computer on it due to their ineptitude. They may have your personal information in their address books, and your data ends up in spammers' and scammers' databases. Their computers may end up DDoSing the web sites you like, or your favorite game server. Letting malware run rampant makes the internet an unsafe place, for anything, not just for doing business. Countries which are overrun by crime are not nice places, not even for those who can protect themselves. If we don't help protect the people who can't protect themselves, we're handing over our world to criminals.
Try these two solutions:
(1) Tell your Uncle to imagine that this is 1950 and you both live there at the same age and that you send him typed letters -- using a typewriter of course -- and suddenly he gets a letter that is typed and has your forged signature on it. He gets conned, thinking it's you. Tell him, that's what happened. Then introduce him to software that makes this harder to do e.g. EMSIsoft.
(2) If that doesn't work, he's probably hopeless and you can tell him that evil spirits are in his PC but a software program fights the evil spirits and introduce him to antivirus software or tell him to stop using his PC.
You might also get some software that returns that PC to the state it was in before you restart it and tell him to restart the PC every night and the damage will not be so bad.
Absolutely shocking to me that the one solution that is the most obvious (a user actually educating themselves about the tool they rely on) is the one that has somehow now been deemed "magical" due to mass ignorance.
It's easy to see how that happened. Information processing is abstract, you don't see any moving parts that make it obvious what's going on. Add the endless versatility and power of computers to that and computers are arguably amongst the most difficult devices to interact with. But to make personal computers (including the mobile computers we don't call PC's) popular and accessible the software industry has put such a strong focus on user friendliness and intuitive interfaces that the expectation has become that you don't need to learn or know anything to use a computer, it is expected to magically work. This push towards knowledge-free computing has helped to put computers in nearly every home, and I certainly see that as a positive effect. Unfortunately it has also resulted in a large majority of computer users who, apart from some operational knowledge, have no idea at all what a computer actually is and leaves them completely helpless when something goes wrong. Abstractions are far from perfect, and I keep having this nagging feeling that we would have fewer helpless users, *and* fewer problems with malware and phishing etc., if the OS builders had made interfaces that helped people to understand computers instead of trying to camouflage what they actually are. I suspect that quite a few people who do have the intellectual capability to understand what a computer is are kept in the dark because it's abstracted away too much. That doesn't mean I want everybody to use a Linux CLI or something like that, and I don't know what UIs would have been like if keeping the computer visible and transparent had been a goal as well as making it easy to use, but I do think the attempts to camouflage what's going probably confuse people more than they help in the long run.
I say fuck 'em.
No, fuck the corporations that misinform people about what they're buying and leave it to their friends and family to clean up the mess.
Why are you telling him his account is hacked. In the phone analogy his phone isn't hacked, somebody just called him in the normal way.
Unless you can find any evidence that actions were taken using authority given to you or to him just ignore the email.
I can send you a letter and write anyone's name and address in the upper left corner of the envelope (From field). The only legitimate marking on an envelope is the post mark and with email it is most of the IP addresses in the headers.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Tell them bad people can use their computer to store and distribute kiddie porn. If that doesn't scare them then you might have a bigger problem.
what else should I feel responsible for telling him?
Nothing.
Tech enthusiasts often get satisfaction from helping others in this way. But you should always understand that you are not responsible for doing so, and they should understand that too. If they are difficult or unappreciative, well it's not your problem. If they don't follow your advice, it's not your problem. Your goal in doing it is because it's a nice and helpful i.e. good thing to do; when it stops feeling like that then you're not achieving the goal, it's not really nice and helpful no matter what your intentions, how right you may be or how much safer they might be for following it.
If your uncle knew a lot about cars and you were going to buy one, would you consider that he was obliged to find you a good runner and teach you how to drive? Would he even go into lots of detail or just give a handful of key general points? Would you definitely follow his advice to the letter or would you take it on board and do what you want to do?
The best advice I've given is that if there's any kind of account then you do not use links in emails, go to the site normally. Seeing as he went about asking you what the link was, perhaps that might already have sunk in.
FYI an email with your address in the "from" and his in the "to" field doesn't offer any clue which has been compromised, or if anyone has. One possibility would be if anyone has sent one of those stupid "forward 1000 times and Bill Gates donates $1b to charity" with both of your email addresses.
Get an ipad.
Give him a new mail account. And tell him not to trust anything, even if you sent it. And tell him that mails are basically electronic postcards that can be easyly searched, scanned and manipulated, even the sender and the reciever. If he's still with you, tell him a bit about mailheaders and look at them with him. ... Although I personally wouldn't bother going to much into the details of email, they are insane anyway, in my opinion. (The Type A email security incident you describe pretty much proves my point).
Clean his system, give him a fresh thunderbird install with a new account and - if he fell like doing this - set up an encrypted mail communication between you and him. Explain which part of that makes it a sufficiently secure means of communication and which part can still be compromised (his, your's or anybody elses system).
If he's a person who's usage patterns are covered by Ubuntu, offer to move his system to that. ... I got my daughter an ubuntu netbook for her birthday. The amount of hassle-freeness is refreshing. It does suck that sound and mic are causing trouble on Ubuntu 12LTS, but that's a minor tradeoff for the lack of headaches I've gotten in return.
Good luck.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
He also might benefit from not using AOL. Their security is not very good, unlike Yahoo! Mail or Gmail.
Send him an email from BarrackObama, thanking him for his service or something,with a link to click on for an invitation to a whitehouse reception.
(or pick some other political social organization...)
This should demonstrate how easy it is to hack someone.
I've done that to relatives plenty of times. They'll ask me what's wrong then disregard my advice. They dig themselves a deeper hole and come crying back to me. I tell them I'm kind of busy but if there's money involved I can clear a spot for them.
I get this kind of thing all the time. Endless demands for tech support and then when I do something they scream at me that I broke something and they know better. So from now on screw them, they're on their own.
Random relative or friend hacked hypothesis:
- malware resides in random person's PC (This person has been a participant/recipient in one of the family and friends chain letter/joke emails that have 50 recipient in teh To: field and Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd in the Subjectline.
- malware looks through random relative's address book
- malware, with the objective to infect more machines, emails Uncle and others in random relatives address book pretending to be him(chosen at random from the same address book.
If you're like me, you can't tell them to stop sending the FUCKING chain letters and fake virus warnings without alienating yourself from the family. 'Thanks Grandma, since it's my job I really do know about these things a few months before Ethyl tells you about it.' Teach your friends and family how to use BCC: it's the only hope.
Don't click on just any old link. Don't open shit in spam emails. Becareful on porn sites. Update you antivirus weekly. Automatic scans. Then be done with it.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Just say "It's bad, m'kay? It's not good, it's bad." Works as well as jargon.
Gently reply
Anyone in the word can write your return address on an envelope and mail it to him. So explain to him that email is the exact same way.
In his 60s? A regular on Facebook? Still uses AOL? Believes he's in no danger?
Just cut him loose, man. He's a dinosaur on a path to total self-destruction.
People like you are the real problem.
You mean people who recognize that others have better things to do than waste their time learning a needlessly complex device? People like you are the reason Apple and Google are worth billions and you aren't because they understand design and you pretty clearly do not.
Computers are working tools, and manipulating a tool is something that must be learned.
So we should make tools intentionally difficult to use? I should have to learn a programming language to adjust the temperature on my thermostat? If someone cannot be trained to do a simple task quickly with a tool then the tool is badly designed. That is 100% the fault of the designer. While there is a learning curve to everything, it is a question of degrees. A tool that is unnecessarily hard to learn just because the designer could not be bothered to make it simpler is a bad tool. (and the designer of that tool is bad at design) Just because you can figure it out with sufficient effort doesn't mean it is a useful application of time and effort to do so.
Many people seem to be strongly opposed to trying to understand how a computer works to use it, but sorry, that's just the way things work.
So you know everything about how how an airplane works? You know enough to do all your own home repairs, no matter how complex? You know everything about engine repair and never need a mechanic? Of course you don't. Computers are tools and you can get useful work out of a tool without knowing all the details about how it works. In fact it would be a HUGE waste of money, brains and time for you to try to learn all of that.
People not trained in the use of machine tools are not allowed to use them, it should arguably be the same thing for computers.
I run a manufacturing company that uses machine tools. Very few of our employees know how to use even most of the features of them and yet they are able to do their jobs and do them well. They are trained on the bits that apply to their job and we try to keep those as simple as possible. They don't care about all the arcane details of the tools and they don't need to. If someone cannot be trained to do a simple task quickly with a tool then the tool is badly designed. Computers are no exception.
The only way to guarantee that someone sending an email is really who he claims to be is digital signing, and for some reason no one uses it.
No one uses digital signatures because hardly anyone understands digital signatures. Seriously, I can count one one hand the number of people among my family and close friends that understand what a digital signature is, why they should care about them and are able to figure out how to use one. Even if I sent one, virtually no one I email would have the slightest idea what I was doing. And 99.9999% of the time a digital signature would be of no value even if I did use it because it's quite rare that someone tries to spoof my email. I'm not even convinced the tools CAN be made simple enough to bother, though I recognize the potential value of digital signatures. Maybe they can be made easy enough to use but certainly no one has accomplished that feat yet.
It's Malware.. MMMkay and it's bad MMMkay
Geebus what a ridiculous question. Non Techies? Really? Look just give them an analogy that malware is like an STD. If you sleep around without protecting yourself, you'll get one and then your penis will fall off.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
My Mom was hacked by a relevant email with a link that made sense to her. The email FROM was a granddaughter's address and about pregnancy. The granddaughter WAS actually pregnant, so this fit.
Mom clicked the link using her Windows PC. She knew immediately that was bad based on what followed, but wasn't smart enough to unplug the box. She tried to close windows and shutdown - because I'd been so careful to make sure that she knew that was the "proper way" a decade earlier.
Her PC was a Pentium4 with 1GB of RAM.
She didn't tell anyone there was an issue. She just started re-using the PC the following day for surfing and emails. It became slower and slower over time. I tried to remote in to fix it and couldn't. I told her not to use it for anything that wasn't trivial. No airline stuff, no stock market anything, and definitely ZERO banking or email. 2 months later, I finally made a trip there - she's 4 states away - and I loaded Lubuntu on the box. She's still running Lubuntu and in a few weeks I'll migrate her from 10.04 to 12.04 LTS release.
She like Lubuntu. It is easy, simple, relatively secure and I can remote in easily. I've added weekly patching of her box to my normal weekly patching server list, so it isn't any extra effort for me at all. I'd already had Mom using Firefox and Thunderbird on Windows, so migrating to using them on Linux was nothing extra.
I even got Quicken running through WINE in 2009.
This summer, that P4 motherboard died. I haven't be for a visit, but I was able to talk a PC knowledgeable person through swapping the HDD out for a new computer. Inside the new PC, everything was exactly as before. All her data, programs, settings. Only the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules had to be deleted so the static IP would be put back so ssh port forwarding from the router would keep working. NOTHING ELSE WAS CHANGED. 100% working. No license crap to deal with. The new machine is a Core i7 monster, but Mom just thinks it is a little quicker, not 200x faster, thanks to the highly efficient Lubuntu OS and GUI.
With the new Core i7 w/ 8GB of RAM, I could setup VirtualBox and give her a WindowsXP VM for Quicken, TurboTax and a few other Microsoft-Windows-only programs. Nah ... don't want to open that Pandora's box again.
She's better off and happier with Lubuntu. Definitely do not inflict Unity on anyone. Keeping the interface as much like WniXP has been good for her.
IS FER PWN3'n N00BZ!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
DOS is an operating system? The only DOS that I know of is denial of service attack.
I remember Solaris. George Clooney, Natascha McElhone and Viola Davis where in that movie.
because he received the mail and didn't click the link. Yet. He was smart enough to call you and verify if you were the sender before clicking on it. Since you declined he is safe, and doesn't need to do anything else.
...and that he should take it to PC Doctor and have it fixed. There is really nothing else you can do as there is no hope of convincing him to stop using Windows.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
To "immunize" a Windows system, I effectively use the principles in "layered security" possibles!
http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22HOW+TO+SECURE+Windows+2000%2FXP%22&go=&form=QBRE
I.E./E.G.-> I have done so since 1997-1998 with the most viewed, highly rated guide online for Windows security there really is which came from the fact I also created the 1st guide for securing Windows, highly rated @ NEOWIN (as far back as 1998-2001) here:
http://www.neowin.net/news/apk-a-to-z-internet-speedup--security-text
& from as far back as 1997 -> http://web.archive.org/web/20020205091023/www.ntcompatible.com/article1.shtml which Neowin above picked up on & rated very highly.
That has evolved more currently, into the MOST viewed & highly rated one there is for years now since 2008 online in the 1st URL link above...
Which has well over 500,000++ views online (actually MORE, but 1 site with 75,000 views of it went offline/out-of-business) & it's been made either:
---
1.) An Essential Guide
2.) 5-5 star rated
3.) A "sticky-pinned" thread
4.) Most viewed in the category it's in (usually security)
5.) Got me PAID by winning a contest @ PCPitStop (quite unexpectedly - I was only posting it for the good of all, & yes, "the Lord works in mysterious ways", it even got me PAID -> http://techtalk.pcpitstop.com/2007/09/04/pc-pitstop-winners/ (see January 2008))
---
Across 15-20 or so sites I posted it on back in 2008... & here is the IMPORTANT part, in some sample testimonials to the "layered security" methodology efficacy:
---
SOME QUOTED TESTIMONIALS TO THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SAID LAYERED SECURITY GUIDE I AUTHORED:
http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=672ebdf47af75a0c5b0d9e7278be305f&t=28430&page=2
"I recently, months ago when you finally got this guide done, had authorization to try this on simple work station for kids. My client, who paid me an ungodly amount of money to do this, has been PROBLEM FREE FOR MONTHS! I haven't even had a follow up call which is unusual." - THRONKA, user of my guide @ XTremePcCentral
AND
"APK, thanks for such a great guide. This would, and should, be an inspiration to such security measures. Also, the pc that has "tweaks": IS STILL GOING! NO PROBLEMS!" - THRONKA, user of my guide @ XTremePcCentral
AND
http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=672ebdf47af75a0c5b0d9e7278be305f&t=28430&page=3
"Its 2009 - still trouble free! I was told last week by a co worker who does active directory administration, and he said I was doing overkill. I told him yes, but I just eliminated the half life in windows that you usually get. He said good point. So from 2008 till 2009. No speed decreases, its been to a lan party, moved around in a move, and it still NEVER has had the OS reinstalled besides the fact I imaged the drive over in 2008. Great stuff! My client STILL Hasn't called me back in regards to that one machine to get it locked down for the kid. I am glad it worked and I am sure her wallet is appreciated too now that it works. Speaking of which, I need to call her to see if I can get some leads. APK - I will say it again, the guide is FANTASTIC! Its made my PC experience much easier. Sandboxing was great. Getti
Windows security is so hopelessly broken that only experts can properly secure it. Just imagine what can go wrong when you want to install Skype.
or just take a Ubuntu or Mint CD, install in 20 minutes and be done with it. No "special" browsers and virus scanners required whatsoever. It comes with firefox, open office and gimp. No need to twist your mind around the Ribbon.
And all software+updates from a defined, dependable and secure source.
..is very good. Skype works as expected.
Just install Mint Linux and claim it is the "latest, much more secure version of Windows".
First, shell out serious money for an insecure operating system.
Then shell out more money to attempt to secure that OS.
Finally, take away the user's right to administer the system.
Or, get Mint Linux for free and be done with the security nightmares.
"Looks like they might have hacked both of our accounts, just to be safe I think we should both change our passwords."
Those commercials helped people understand this stuff more than any tech article
Of course it matters. If you are a newbie running many versions of Windows, the browser is running with Administrator privileges unless you go out of your way to lock it down. If you are running Ubuntu Linux , then they can just sudo to gain the same level of OS access. If you are running a real OS, then they might explout the browser, but they still can't own the OS. Also, plenty of "browser exploits" use the browser as an attack vector, but the flaw exploited is in an OS library, which will not have the same vulnerability on a different OS.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Your best bet is to stop trying to explain things to him until you understand them yourself. Nobody's account was cracked. Neither your e-mail, nor your Uncle's, has to be cracked for someone to forge an e-mail. Any script kiddie can send an e-mail to anyone else that claims to be from whomever they want. All that is needed is an open SMTP port. RFC 822 See also RFC 822
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
There is a level of technological savvy that's vastly underestimated. There are TONs of people out there using AOL and Hotmail and stuff and these are your family. You can't just let them hang. Do your best to migrate them. Gmail will have a lot more security and it will let you import AOL. Heck lie, tell him you got mail from him so it's both of your accounts are hacked. Whatever it takes. I'm not trying to go full on Machiavellian but there's some validity to the thought: Ends justify the means. Shame it's an online problem or you could just install teamviewer and clean it out yourself. I find sometimes chicanery is the most efficient way to deal with these types of situations. Sorry.
Just another second banana
"Weird, I got an email just like that. I opened and the same thing happened! So I think it's a virus." No blame, no shame.
After making the Nth four hour round trip drive to "fix" my parents PC, I ultimately got tired of it and wiped Windows from the machine and replaced it with Ubuntu. Has been running for quite some time now problem free. ( Ubuntu 10.10 ) Couldn't be happier.
If I had to do it today, it would likely be Linux Mint since the Ubuntu folks have obviously lost their damn minds.
fagboyjosh
Ever heard of that "here, let me google that for you" website known as lmgtfy.com ? Well, someone had sent me a link to that with "f**k you" as the search phrase. And of course I had left that window's search results open. Mother of 7 kids living across the street asks me for help dis-infecting her malware and spyware infested computer, and in discussion, I offered to look up something online for her real quick about her particular problem. We go back to my screen, I enter my password to unlock it, and lo and behold is that search page still open with the F-bomb on it. I tried to reassure her that it was a friend who had sent me a link to that page, but it was no use; she thinks I sit around googling swear words.
Not sure why Anon. Coward got marked "Funny"? It's the most likely explanation, because it's in fact a common trick. If your machine is compromised, or even better if an email you sent to a bunch of people is received/stolen, it's fairly likely that many of the recipients know each other. And it's more effective to forge mail from one of the recipients than from the account that got compromised, because that leads to "You must have gotten hacked" "No, not me, must have been you" conversations between you and your uncle, instead of "Did you get hacked?" "Oh, yes, better fix that!" between your uncle and your cousin Alice who really did get infected.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
just tell him to always wear protection. he will figure out the rest.