Maybe, just maybe someone has experienced somethig similar...
Okay, imagine this.
Every day when you arrive from work, tired and exhausted, you feel a little of bit of relief while turning on your computer, expecting some relaxing moments filled with creating or playing.
And just then, you realize that while you were away, some funky stuff has happened...
* BIOS has absolutely random settings
* CPU temperature is weirdly 52C, yet the computer was supposed to be "cold" yet
* and BIOS gives "CPU overlock fail" error thus halting the system.
Which - can be get rid of - only by reboot, quick BIOS enter and "load optimized defaults" choice.
Okay. The fun goes on.
Windows XP Professional loads...
Next "happy" notes you take - are:
* desktop is filled with photos of cute boys (in most girls opinion cute, I actually cannot imagine a cute male)
* a load of spyware, adaware and equal crap.
* savegames of your favourite games are OVERWRITTEN!!!
* MSN messenger's "My received files" folder contains loads of files named like "funny.exe", "myphotos.exe", "jokevideo.exe" and so on, each infected with some trojan/virus, usually with a name starting with W32/...something.letter
* I don't even have to mention another IE hijacker which has successfully overwritten IE's start page with some ad&virus related crap.
* Some things have deleted themselves!!!Ã, :o
What a powerful and destructive virus, that is.
This virus is 20 years old, dumbest that anything on this ble and green ball we're living on...
...and incidentally my own sister.
Now, what I beg for - is all the help to avoid these frustrating evenings I have, cleaning up that whole mess she causes while I'm at work.
I definetly need:
- something to absolutely restrict some certain web pages.
- something to restrict access to certain folders on hard drive (about 99% of it!)
- something to avoid her downloading/installing any kind of software
I made a new "limited" user account, but since Windows XP help does not say a thing about it and all kind of toubleshooters lead to "Contact your ISP/system administrator" result... (which makes me really angry towards idiots at Microsoft, even if they think that every home user has some shady character named "system administrator" which turns computer on and off for him, Well - I DON'T) ...I have no clue how to do this from windows control panel.
So, freeware programs are welcome.
(No shareware please, I really don't think that I'd be safer if license just expires at some moment when protection is needed most.)
And also good instructions how to prevent/restrict this or that.
I can't just set a power-on password or close down whole Internet for "dumb user account", because my parents need sometimes my computer too, but JUST for some websites at internet and MS Office. That's all.
First of all, tell you're twenty-year-old sister she needs to control her surfing habits.
Second, download Firefox and use THAT as your default internet. Remove any links to IE she might find, and tell her to use Firefox from now on. Not only is it uber-stable, it blocks popups and most spyware. Firefox is much harder to compromise than IE.
Thirdly, read my clean-up tutorial: http://www.sitesled.com/members/lilgryph/docs/tweaky-clean.doc
Any more questions, just ask: lilgryphmaster@gmail.com
sorry, this is the correct link:
http://www.sitesled.com/members/lilgryph/docs/tweaky-clean.rtf
The question is: What the hell have you made to your sister for her to make that??? ???
I'll second the recomendation for the Firefox browser. I would also use the companion e-mail client Thunderbird. Both are open source and excellent. You can also replace MS office with OpenOffice.org, another excellent open source software, if you wish.
www.tweakhound.com is also a great place to go to secure and clean your computer.
It may be www.tweakhound.net, not sure
Thanks for so fast answer, LilGryphMaster, but it's not the spyware or viruses I'm worried about.
It's "teH Virus" - my own sister!!!
I don't tell her to use this or another browser.
What I keep telling her is to STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY MACHINE!!!
I would have simply used power-on password for a looong time already, but since my mother needs computer for her job, and somethimes extremely fast (to make some critical second-before-deathline tax paying at internet bank website or other stuff - bookkeeping as a service is bizarre business) so I can't just set a load of passwords to the system. She has to be able access internet any moment she needs to - or consequences would cost a LOT of money to some of her clients. Especially the ones who cheat government with tax.
But as soon my sister sees that mom has access to the computer and even more - TeH inTarNet - she eats mom's nerves until she gets to her everyday crap downloading and my life/data ruining action.
I decided to cut the ties which make her want to use the computer.
These are
- MSN messenger, where strange guys send her strange trojans disguised as "funny/my car/my birthday movies" - and which she always foolisly opens
- and some internet sites, mostly about posting your own pictures and rating other's pics and of course, chatrooms.
Now - there's the things I have to protect. Her english is just about enough to count to ten, so she answers random answer to every system dialog. "Format fixed hard disk?", "nuke asia?", "cause mess?", "get a virus?"... there's 50% of chance for her to answer "yes" if there's choice between yes and no answers.
And whenever something happnes she won't understand - she just hits the reset button. Just like that. During scandisk, game loading, a month of downloading something fom P2P client program (which usually deletes partial download!), no matter. Reset. It's third installment of WinXP on my machine. Just because someone messed up some system files.
That's the problem.
get her a monitor for christmas with a picture of msn glued to. she won't notice for years. Or you could always... reformat her, if you know what I mean
hmm.. a tricky one is this. i have a similar problem with my sister. if you don't use msn, delete it. then, somewhere in ie. there is a function where you can tell it the only sites you will allow it to use. thus, you could give it all of your sites, your moms sites and any sites you deem suitable. not too sure where this is atm as i cannot be bothered to check.
heh, I got pissed at microsoft a while back too. The help files say "contact system administrator", and when you go to the support page you have to give your winxp ID number, which can be found in the System Properties dialog - and in case the computer does not work, that's inaccessable. And if the ID happens to contain the letter combination "OEM", there is NOTHING microsoft is doing for you.
I think that atleast in XP Home you can make another account, and just remove all programs and disalbe for that account, but I don't know how to restrict access to folders... XP professional should be able to do that. I've done that at school on win2k, we were supposed to make our own folder unaccessable to others... but I don't remember how that was done.
Download Zonealarm at www.zonelabs.com/. There's a free version.
You can change the settings to prevent internet access for certain programs. So you can prevent Instant Messenger from ever accessing the internet, even if the program is still installed on your computer. Though you should remember, that once you install zonealarm, start up instant messenger. It will ask you if you want to allow Instant Messenger to access the internet, just click no, BUT ALSO REMEMBER to click "Remember this setting"...that way when she tries to access it, she won't get the popup, and hopefully won't figure out what's blocking it.
You may be able to set a password to zonealarm too.
oh, if you really wanted to screw her over, you could block internet explorer from accessing the internet, and then only use firefox for web browsing. Just make sure your mom knows to use firefox, and don't tell your sister that firefox exists.
psssst, Anarcho, the "Modify" -button...
I used to be a virus. Well, not so much a virus, more like a computer hog. My parents finially came to their sences and bought me my own computer and in return I often have to fix computer problems my parents have. If you're like me (and nearly everyone else here), you've got other computers lying around. Fix one of those up and give it to her. She can play all she wants and if she breaks it then it's her own problem.
Yeah, I got 200Mhz pentium, in woking condition.
Enough for her to play Sims.
About firefox idea: whatEVER my mom only knows, sister will suck out along with mom's nerves. I tried this and that. Sister sees mom surfing - sister surfs half a hour later, while mom is taking antidepressants. I set a system password and told only mom. I erased all shortcuts to MSN. I did... eh. Nothing worked yet.
Other computer?
Internet. She wants to surf!
There's a horrible disease at Estonia, rampaging through teens, and It's called www.rate.ee
A place where you can make an account and post pictures. And people rate your pictures. And you can rate theirs. I know people who spend most of their day sitting at the damned site. Who get up in the middle of the night just to check if there's any comments added to their pics. The site also comes with isometric game-like Flash chat, e-mail account and forum.
And - the site earns about 7000 euros per week just for a single 468x60-pixel banner and SMS-es which people send to get more personalized account mainpage or a bit different character in this interactive chatroom.
The makers of this horror say there's average 4 million views per day!!! Hell, there's 1,3 million people living in whole country...
This is sick. And my sister has the disease too.Ã,Â
So there's no way she's gonna accept a machine without internet.
From rate.ee she hooks up with all kinds of strange guys, which later bombard her with all kind of crap through MSN messenger.
There's no way to keep her away from rate'ing, if there's any possibilty to get into my machine. Just like a drug addiction.
Well, she's not the only one, as much as I have seen... when two Estonian teens meet at the mall or school, they won't ask "did you see that movie?" or "did you watch Formula race?". They ask "Did you see my new pics at rate.ee?". When they arrive home after school, they won't eat lunch or rest. No, the first thing they do is checking out if there's some positive ratings or comments to their pictures! I don't know if there's equal things in other countries, but here - a brilliant business idea has grown into quite a problem.
Well, it has been beneficial to internetizing whole country, hardware dealers, and of course, various ISP's. As media tells, the site is visited daily more than ALL other estonian sites in summary!
But the site brings out even smallest pieces of vanity which people have. And enslaves them. The user ages vary from 5 to 50!
Sounds like a sci-fi story? Well, it's not.
Ah.
Now, when I link these two machines with some LAN cable to share internet to other computer, I know what happens.
Happens that most of the time she's sitting behind her machine, MSN-ing, or with her weird crowd of friends + downloading crap/photos and there's no damn way for me to download anything even at 1kb/s, not to talk about multiplaying something, where every bit of data speed counts.
Uh. I also use MSN Messenger. So uninstalling it won't be too good idea.
There MUST be someone who had similar problem and got few good progs to control whole thing.
Anyone?
Tell your sister that the guys she meets on the internet are really old men that get off on her talking to them.
This is hard to prove, because it's not like that.
As I said, most contacts come from rate.ee.
People do have pictures there.
Fake pictures are not accepted (it's pretty easy to determine), plus most users update their pictures weekly.
And there's no cure to disease anyway.
There IS a cure, it just takes some time to work it's magic. It's called aging. It woerks miracles! Alternately you can throw her in a locker with computer magazines and tell her that she has to read a minimum of 1 magazine per week!
Block the site. Easy enough?
Easy.
HOW?
How about installing linux :D
In Norton internet security:
1. Status & Settings
2. Parental Control
3. Turn On
4. Configure
5. Sites
6. Add
7. Type in the address and hit ok
Now if you don't wish to block categories (nudity, violence, drugs, etc.) then uncheck the boxes in the block categories section.
That should do it. However after a boot, there is an uncloseable box that shows the loading status of the Parental Control. Nothing harmful, just bothersome for several minutes.
Thank you.
Or better yet, get your self one of these:
onClick BioMouse Finger Print Security Mouse/Scanner (http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/keyboards/5f11/)
why not just set a password and let your parents know what it is?
Quote from: BOYD1981 on Tue 21/12/2004 07:35:20
why not just set a password and let your parents know what it is?
Read other posts. It dun work. His sister is a 1337 H4xx0R
You can block specific sites within Internet explorer by checking out the security settings, although if memory serves it can be difficult due to Microsoft's infatuation in unintuitive and generally poor design). Additionally, I would recommend downloading Powertoys for XP (search MS page) or using FreshUI by FreshDevices. FreshUI is a little bit more user-friendly (IMO) and has more in-depth explanations as to what options do. I haven't messed with Powertoys as much but FreshUI will let you tweak a specific User profile and you can specify whether or not they can do basic tasks (access the Run menu, access certain drives or programs or even install anything that modifies the registry). I've used both to make basic user logins that allow the person to do the basic novice stuff but nothing too destructive.
You can't block specific sites in IE, only sites' cookies and pages that may contain inappropriate material. I thought that maybe you might be able to do that too, but I searched for 45 minutes and couldn't find anything except blocking or permitting cookies.
EVIL- You can block pages in ie. See the pictures below. It just really sucks to use. Click on settings and add sites to allow or disallow under the approved sites tab. You can set a password there too. As I said I have never used this function though because I didn't like the way it worked.
(http://webpages.charter.net/jrl2222/images/contentadvisor.jpg)
(http://webpages.charter.net/jrl2222/images/contentadvisor2.jpg)
Sounds like someone needs parantal controls... also, would be a good idea to admin pass your bios, and do a search for some reghacks... we had an internet cafe in Iraq, and we reghacked the hell out of it so that normal users couldn't do shit... and since they were limited (they couldn't even open Explorer to see the file system) we had the undo reghack on the admin side... so log in as admin, undo the hacks, do what needs to be done, merge the hacks back in, reboot the machine...
But you know... thats up to you :P