So you got/gave a new computer for XMAS

The Holiday time is usually joyful for me, until my various family, neighbors, friends, and distant people who just showed up at my door, asked me to "fix" their computer presents.

The Holidays coincide with a lot of hackers out of school as well. And as bots have become increasingly common, the Holiday period is planned as a massive bot attack. It is an ugly mix.

Please, please, believe me. If you connect a brand new computer to the internet without proper safegaurds, your Holiday present will within twenty minutes become a broken toy. Often it does not take even that long.

Please read, and all links in the resources section, at the least, and follow the advice found in this link:

"Before you connect your computer to the Internet for the first time ":
http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/before_you_plug_in.html

Happy Holiday wishes to all.
Bill

 

Thanks for the timely reminder on keeping safe on the Internet.

Happy Holidays to you and yours, Charles

 

Happy Holidays to you Charles.

So, you moved my seasonal and timely reminder to the least visited subforum on the site?

Best to you, sir.
Bill

 

Hi Bill,

It's a security issue and non XP specific and until the Board's policies change, them's the rules.

I think your assesment that its the least visited is off the mark, security generates as much interest as any other.

Regards - Charles

 

Hmmm, I wonder. Seems to me that if that were the case there'd be a whole bunch fewer problems related to it.

On the plus side Bill, there's still a redirect in the XP forum so this thread is still available there.

 

Hi Zander,

If I'm not mistaken, I don't think you've ever posted to this "least visited subforum on the site" as Bill calls it. That'll generate interest

But I get your point. Too bad that more users don't deal with the prophylactic side of security instead of hollering after the fact. But that's human nature.

Happy Holidays to you and yours - Charles

 

I plead guilty and I also rest my case.

 

LOL, between the three of us we've managed to generate a lot of hits for the this thread.

Regards - Charles

 

The subject really warrants a sticky but most of those with a new computer are going to be too busy clicking to stop in and read about a little preventative medicine.

Unfortunately, the newly purchased trashed computer is becoming pretty commonplace. We've probably all got some war stories and one thing is for sure - we are going to have more following this Christmas season. I'm still waiting to meet the first teenager that has a trouble-free working system.

Click here for trouble. Hehehe - gotcha (think what could have been).

 

Rockster2U,

Last XMAS I was dragooned into helping a neighbor purchase a computer as a present for their nearly 15-year-old daughter. (I had previously been dragooned into setting up a Wireless LAN for the parents.)

XMAS morning, 10:20 or so a.m., there is a knock at the door. They cannot figure out how to connect everything together. The computer was a Dell, and if I remember they have elaborate flow charts to describe how to do this.

sigh. (It is a neighbor).

So I grab my hacker 15-year-old and we connect the thing. Three minutes, top, including adding the printer and its drivers.

So, I leave behind my hacker 15-year-old and the neighbor's daughter, and you guessed it -- the phone rang two hours later that I had to go to the neighbors house immediately.

Yes, your guess was right. They had installed every IM and P2P program known to mankind. And now none of the computers in this household would work.

sigh.

So I sort the issue, and return home. My spouse asks me what the problem is. I told her they were worried about virus infections.

Times change.