Help needed to update family safety. Unable to go on line

Hi,
My 2 grandson's (11 years and 12 years) have use of their late mother's laptop. She passed away 15 months ago. They have always been able to connect via my wireless router. But at the moment they are connected but can't get on line. The laptop is advising that the software requires family safety updates, but in order to download the latest updates they need to go on line. The user and password details required will be their mum's but none of us know it.

I'm hoping that somebody will advise before we make a trip to PC World.

It is possible to uninstall the current safety software, but I'm not sure if this will make a difference to the fact that they cannot go on line.

Any advice will be much appreciated.
Thanks.

 

I might move this from the Vista forum to General Security.

If nobody can help you with the internet connection, ring your ISP's helpdesk, they should be able to walk you through the settings and check.

 

Thanks Matt. Their ISP was Tiscali. Their dad has written 4 letters to them and sent them 4 copies of their mother's death certificate asking for the MAC, plus there was something wrong with the router. They never responded to him once - hence the reason he kept writing to them. Nobody would talk to him on the telephone because he wasn't the account holder. Eventually he cancelled his subscriptions. Now they are writing to his deceased wife, demanding a month's subscription for BB which they say she owes them. About a week ago, he managed to speak to somebody in Mumbai (that's the only place you can get put through to- when calling from England) who confirmed that they did have a copy of his wife's death certificate as it was mentioned on the computer's statement of his wife's account. He was put through to different departments and after much aggravation one of their operators told him they would send him the MAC via text - he got that and a letter with the details (amazing). But he's still getting demand letters addressed to his late wife asking for money.

I know this forum is not about ISP complaints but thought you might wish to know the problem as you have been so decent to respond so quickly. Wish Tiscali had. Sometime this week he intends to contact SKY to open an account with them. Perhaps that might help. He couldn't open it without the MAC. Now that he has that he can get going - hopefully.

The boys have been logging on with their laptops via my router. One rents his laptop from his school, and the other as previously mentioned belongs to his late mum.

Thanks again.

 

Yes, sounds familiar Bligh. I sympathise with your situation enormously.

If they are trying to connect through your router and internet connection, (I expect) your ISP should be able to give you some guidance.

The boys' system is trying to connect to your ISP. It needs to acquire an IP address from your router, then it uses the router to connect to the internet.

A MAC address is individual for every ethernet/network connection on a computer (it is on the computer, it is not supplied by an outside source). For the laptops I work with, the MAC address is on a label on the underside of the machine. You might need to find the MAC address of the boys' ethernet/wireless connection so that it can connect to the router and the internet.

I am not a networking person though. It's just to the best of my knowledge.

Matt

 

Thanks Matt, I have taken all that on board and will see what happens.

Bligh.

 

Good advice and some help.

With the risk of being lambasted for posting this, please see below.

Kudos to "Ask Leo ".

Sure opened my eyes!

Summary: There are tools to recover most of your 'remembered' password. You can use them if you forgot your 'remembered' password, and so can anyone with access to your machine.
I've forgotten my password [to a web site, mail account, instant messaging tool, etc.]. However, I can log in because I have 'remember my password' configured, so the computer just logs me in automatically since it saved password. Is there a way I can see what that password is?
Yes.
And that should scare you, because it's an important lesson about just how
dangerous it is to use 'remember me'.
Why? Because if you can recover it, then anyone who has access to the machine can probably recover it.
'Remember my password' doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore, now does it?
•
When you choose 'Remember my password', or any equivalent, the software does exactly that - it saves a copy of your password somewhere on the computer.
Sometimes it's stored in plain text - available to anyone if they know where to look, sometimes it's encrypted or obfuscated in some way. Regardless, it has to be quick and easy for the program to fetch the remembered password and decrypt it, if needed, each time you login or do whatever it is that requires that password.
And that applies to almost all common applications that save passwords,
including nearly all instant messaging programs, nearly all email programs, and nearly all websites that require some kind of account name and password to login.
So it stands to reason that there would be utility programs that also can
retrieve those very same account names and passwords.
Let's start with one that you might not even realize.
Firefox
If you use Firefox as your web browser, do this:
Click on the Tools menu
Click on the Options menu item
Click on the Passwords tab
Click on the View Saved Passwords button
In the resulting dialog, click on the Show Passwords button
If you're like me, you'll be fairly shocked the first time you do this. Yes, you
can set a 'master password' to protect your passwords, but the default is not to have one.
And anyone who walks by your computer while you're logged in can do this.
For other programs, you need to download a few simple utilities. Specifically,
NirSoft has available several Password Recovery Tools. Included are tools that will display the saved passwords for a host of different programs and
situations.
You can find, for each IM program I run, the service, the account name and the password. the account names and passwords are displayed in clear text.
I'm not guaranteeing it, of course, since there could be many other things at
play, but if you've lost a password, and you have 'Remember' turned on, there's a very high likelihood that you can grab one of the utilities from NirSoft, and recover it. It's certainly one of the first things I would try.
Yet Another Word About Security
I encourage you to download those tools and play with them on your own machine.
Using them, you'll see how trivially easy it is to recover many passwords that
are merely hidden by the 'remember' function of so some applications.
Now remember: anyone can use them.
If you leave your machine logged in, anyone who can walk up to it can insert a CD or floppy with these tools, and get your saved passwords just as trivially.
And while logging out or using a password protected screen saver puts up a
barrier, even that barrier, while significant, is not impenetrable.
I want to make sure you remember two important things:
1) 'Remember my password' is a convenience, and a security risk. Use it with
caution.
2) If your machine is not physically secure it is not secure. If someone can
walk up to it, insert a disk and reboot it, they can take total control. And
that includes recovering your passwords with tools as we've seen here.
And remember also, that while you've just read this article and learned how to recover your remembered password ... your 'friends' and perhaps those who are not your friends have also read this and learned how to steal your remembered password.

 

Since kkaylynne brought this thread back to the top and drawn my attention to it can I make a couple of comments.

from bligh

from Mattman

Matt a MAC has two different meanings here in the UK, The first is the one you describe above (media access control) but telecom/broadband providers also have one (known as the Migration Authority Code). I believe this is what bligh was referring to. I do hope things are sorted but obtaining a MAC can be a PITA without the trauma that bligh and family have already suffered.

The first (Media Access Control) is meant to uniquely identify your equipment on the network.

The second (Migration Authority Code) is required when you switch from one broadband supplier to another. You contact supplier A and say I want to swicth to supplier B, A gives you a MAC then you contact B and give them the MAC.

Bligh if you are still having issues please post back and we'll do all we can to help.