Help for Neighbor?

I just saw this on a Windows mailing list:

A neighbor had a serious senior moment yesterday and let Global Techs PC
Support have remote access to her Win 8 HP laptop for a couple of hours.

She realized the error of her ways, contacted her credit card companies,
banks, etc.; changed all her passwords; called one of the major credit
reporting agencies; and so on.

Her son, who is a rocket scientist, told her that they could have
planted any number of undetectable "devices" on her machine and that,
even if she does a Win 8 factory reset, there's no guarantee that doing
that would remove all of the devices. I assume he's talking about
"ordinary" malware so she's going to have him call me so I can get a
better idea of what he's concerned about.

At this point, she's frightened of even turning it on.

What would you do if you were faced with this computer? Win 8 reset?
Nuke and pave? Something else?

I don't know what anti-malware she has on the machine -- whatever comes
with a new HP laptop, I presume, plus perhaps "Norton Security Suite" as
provided by her ISP.

Thanks.

On Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:56:46 -0400, Juan Wei
wrote:

I just saw this on a Windows mailing list:

A neighbor had a serious senior moment yesterday and let Global Techs PC
Support have remote access to her Win 8 HP laptop for a couple of hours.

She realized the error of her ways, contacted her credit card companies,
banks, etc.; changed all her passwords; called one of the major credit
reporting agencies; and so on.

Her son, who is a rocket scientist, told her that they could have
planted any number of undetectable "devices" on her machine and that,
even if she does a Win 8 factory reset, there's no guarantee that doing
that would remove all of the devices. I assume he's talking about
"ordinary" malware so she's going to have him call me so I can get a
better idea of what he's concerned about.

At this point, she's frightened of even turning it on.

What would you do if you were faced with this computer? Win 8 reset?
Nuke and pave? Something else?


I would do a clean reinstallation of Windows. And then, *after* doing
that, I would change all my passwords. Changing them before the
reinstallation does no good, since they might have already gotten the
new ones by using one of their "undetectable devices."


--
Ken Blake

Ken Blake has written on 7/31/2013 6:32 PM:
On Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:56:46 -0400, Juan Wei
wrote:

I just saw this on a Windows mailing list:

A neighbor had a serious senior moment yesterday and let Global Techs PC
Support have remote access to her Win 8 HP laptop for a couple of hours.

She realized the error of her ways, contacted her credit card companies,
banks, etc.; changed all her passwords; called one of the major credit
reporting agencies; and so on.

Her son, who is a rocket scientist, told her that they could have
planted any number of undetectable "devices" on her machine and that,
even if she does a Win 8 factory reset, there's no guarantee that doing
that would remove all of the devices. I assume he's talking about
"ordinary" malware so she's going to have him call me so I can get a
better idea of what he's concerned about.

At this point, she's frightened of even turning it on.

What would you do if you were faced with this computer? Win 8 reset?
Nuke and pave? Something else?


I would do a clean reinstallation of Windows. And then, *after* doing
that, I would change all my passwords. Changing them before the
reinstallation does no good, since they might have already gotten the
new ones by using one of their "undetectable devices."

Define "clean reinstallation". Does it involve reformating the HD first?

On Wed, 31 Jul 2013 18:50:58 -0400, Juan Wei
wrote:

Ken Blake has written on 7/31/2013 6:32 PM:
On Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:56:46 -0400, Juan Wei
wrote:

I just saw this on a Windows mailing list:

A neighbor had a serious senior moment yesterday and let Global Techs PC
Support have remote access to her Win 8 HP laptop for a couple of hours.

She realized the error of her ways, contacted her credit card companies,
banks, etc.; changed all her passwords; called one of the major credit
reporting agencies; and so on.

Her son, who is a rocket scientist, told her that they could have
planted any number of undetectable "devices" on her machine and that,
even if she does a Win 8 factory reset, there's no guarantee that doing
that would remove all of the devices. I assume he's talking about
"ordinary" malware so she's going to have him call me so I can get a
better idea of what he's concerned about.

At this point, she's frightened of even turning it on.

What would you do if you were faced with this computer? Win 8 reset?
Nuke and pave? Something else?


I would do a clean reinstallation of Windows. And then, *after* doing
that, I would change all my passwords. Changing them before the
reinstallation does no good, since they might have already gotten the
new ones by using one of their "undetectable devices."

Define "clean reinstallation". Does it involve reformating the HD first?


No definition is required.And no reformatting first is required.
Simply boot from the installation DVD and follow the prompts for a
clean installation. It will begin by formatting the drive for you.



--
Ken Blake

Ken Blake has written on 7/31/2013 8:19 PM:
On Wed, 31 Jul 2013 18:50:58 -0400, Juan Wei
wrote:

Ken Blake has written on 7/31/2013 6:32 PM:
On Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:56:46 -0400, Juan Wei
wrote:

I just saw this on a Windows mailing list:

A neighbor had a serious senior moment yesterday and let Global Techs PC
Support have remote access to her Win 8 HP laptop for a couple of hours.

She realized the error of her ways, contacted her credit card companies,
banks, etc.; changed all her passwords; called one of the major credit
reporting agencies; and so on.

Her son, who is a rocket scientist, told her that they could have
planted any number of undetectable "devices" on her machine and that,
even if she does a Win 8 factory reset, there's no guarantee that doing
that would remove all of the devices. I assume he's talking about
"ordinary" malware so she's going to have him call me so I can get a
better idea of what he's concerned about.

At this point, she's frightened of even turning it on.

What would you do if you were faced with this computer? Win 8 reset?
Nuke and pave? Something else?


I would do a clean reinstallation of Windows. And then, *after* doing
that, I would change all my passwords. Changing them before the
reinstallation does no good, since they might have already gotten the
new ones by using one of their "undetectable devices."

Define "clean reinstallation". Does it involve reformating the HD first?


No definition is required. And no reformatting first is required.
Simply boot from the installation DVD and follow the prompts for a
clean installation. It will begin by formatting the drive for you.

Oh, so it is a "nuke and pave". :-)

Is this equivalent to the Windows 8 RESET?

On Wed, 31 Jul 2013 18:50:58 -0400, Juan Wei wrote:

I would do a clean reinstallation of Windows. And then, *after* doing
that, I would change all my passwords. Changing them before the
reinstallation does no good, since they might have already gotten the
new ones by using one of their "undetectable devices."

Define "clean reinstallation". Does it involve reformating the HD first?

No. Buy a new machine as the first step!

mechanic explained on 01/08/2013 :
On Wed, 31 Jul 2013 18:50:58 -0400, Juan Wei wrote:

I would do a clean reinstallation of Windows. And then, *after* doing
that, I would change all my passwords. Changing them before the
reinstallation does no good, since they might have already gotten the
new ones by using one of their "undetectable devices."

Define "clean reinstallation". Does it involve reformating the HD first?

No. Buy a new machine as the first step!

Preferably a washing machine!

On Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:56:46 -0400, Juan Wei wrote:

I just saw this on a Windows mailing list:

A neighbor had a serious senior moment yesterday and let Global Techs PC
Support have remote access to her Win 8 HP laptop for a couple of hours.

She realized the error of her ways, contacted her credit card companies,
banks, etc.; changed all her passwords; called one of the major credit
reporting agencies; and so on.

Her son, who is a rocket scientist, told her that they could have
planted any number of undetectable "devices" on her machine and that,
even if she does a Win 8 factory reset, there's no guarantee that doing
that would remove all of the devices. I assume he's talking about
"ordinary" malware so she's going to have him call me so I can get a
better idea of what he's concerned about.

At this point, she's frightened of even turning it on.

What would you do if you were faced with this computer? Win 8 reset?
Nuke and pave? Something else?

What I would do - would be to install Debian. YMMV


I don't know what anti-malware she has on the machine -- whatever comes
with a new HP laptop, I presume, plus perhaps "Norton Security Suite" as
provided by her ISP.

Thanks.

ray carter has written on 7/31/2013 8:21 PM:

What I would do - would be to install Debian. YMMV


Why Debian over the others, say Ubuntu?

Juan Wei wrote:
ray carter has written on 7/31/2013 8:21 PM:
What I would do - would be to install Debian. YMMV


Why Debian over the others, say Ubuntu?

Because Debian might have an interface you can use.

Ubuntu has something that looks like Metro interface.

I feel a little nausea, when I see these icons on the left.
I hate them (my USB key has a version of Ubuntu, from before
the Unity crap showed up). And the appearance of the screen,
is a function of resolution. If you run this crap at 800x600,
you might never figure out what is going on (because some
graphics elements might not appear on the screen as a hint).
I only discovered certain features, when running this on my
backup machine with the 1440x900 LCD screen.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...04_Desktop.png

An alternative might be Linux Mint. It has a few
different GUI options.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint

I tested a beta of the 13.04 depicted in the picture link,
and it was slow. I think 13.04 relies on video card acceleration
for some of the smooth animations they use. So if there
is a problem there, the GUI will be a bit slow. (Like, the
computer you use, has a really old video card. It might not
be accelerated, for those stupid icons.)

Paul

On 07/31/2013 08:39 PM, Paul wrote:
Juan Wei wrote:
ray carter has written on 7/31/2013 8:21 PM:
What I would do - would be to install Debian. YMMV


Why Debian over the others, say Ubuntu?

Because Debian might have an interface you can use.

Ubuntu has something that looks like Metro interface.

I feel a little nausea, when I see these icons on the left.

So install a different desktop environment. Unlike Windows 8, where you
have no alternative to the tile interface, Linux lets you install dozens
of different desktop environments.

On my computer at work I have Ubuntu running the Xfce desktop
environment. No problem.

--
Warren Post
http://my.opera.com/wpost/

Warren Post has brought this to us :
On 07/31/2013 08:39 PM, Paul wrote:
Juan Wei wrote:
ray carter has written on 7/31/2013 8:21 PM:
What I would do - would be to install Debian. YMMV


Why Debian over the others, say Ubuntu?

Because Debian might have an interface you can use.

Ubuntu has something that looks like Metro interface.

I feel a little nausea, when I see these icons on the left.

So install a different desktop environment. Unlike Windows 8, where you have
no alternative to the tile interface, Linux lets you install dozens of
different desktop environments.

On my computer at work I have Ubuntu running the Xfce desktop environment. No
problem.

And you dont have to contend with bugs with MS cant fix that go back
Windows 3.1 or NSA back doors!

Warren Post wrote:

Unlike Windows 8, where you have no alternative to the tile
interface,

Windows 8 has several alternatives to the tile interface but, of
course, you have to RTFM to find that out so most folks will never
know......


--
XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project:
http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

On Thu, 01 Aug 2013 08:11:00 -0600, Warren Post
wrote:


So install a different desktop environment. Unlike Windows 8, where you
have no alternative to the tile interface,


Not true. Windows 8 comes with two interfaces: the modern/metro
interface (which you call the tile interface), and the traditional
desktop interface, much like Windows 7's. You can use either or both.
Personally I use the traditional desktop interface about 99% of the
time.


--
Ken Blake

On Thu, 01 Aug 2013 08:11:00 -0600, Warren Post wrote:

On 07/31/2013 08:39 PM, Paul wrote:
Juan Wei wrote:
ray carter has written on 7/31/2013 8:21 PM:
What I would do - would be to install Debian. YMMV


Why Debian over the others, say Ubuntu?

Because Debian might have an interface you can use.

Ubuntu has something that looks like Metro interface.

I feel a little nausea, when I see these icons on the left.

So install a different desktop environment. Unlike Windows 8, where you
have no alternative to the tile interface, Linux lets you install dozens
of different desktop environments.

On my computer at work I have Ubuntu running the Xfce desktop
environment. No problem.

Does it not occur to you people that someone who gets herself into this
type of problem (and is clueless on how to proceed), might not be quite up
to downloading .iso files, burning to boot media then go thru' all that
might be required to get a linux system running. In all fairness though,
the task is a lot easier than it used to be with say Ubuntu latest -
still!!

As far as NSA is concerned, don't worry about it, they will get what they
need whatever you run and you probably don't have anything they want
anyway. You are just one of multi millions, there's power in numbers.