Re: Family tech support

[Theodore Pham <telamon () cmu edu>]

Drsolly wrote:
> Daughter.1 has picked up a nasty, that wants her to pay for an antivirus, 
> and keeps nagging at her. She already had Norton, but that doesn't seem to 
> want to know. I don't know if she's updated it - probably not.
>
> I didn't fancy wrestling with the malware to try to remove it, or go back 
> to some previous checkpoint (there probably isn't one).
>
> I offered her two solutions.
>
> 1) reinstall XP. She doesn't have the CDs (I don't think they came with 
> the computer). I suspect you can't buy XP now. Vista will cost her about a 
> hundred pounds, and then she'll need to buy a new word processor, I'd 
> guess. Probably another hundred or two. 

Have her run the free version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 
(http://www.malwarebytes.org/) to remove the fake antivirus. It's 
surprisingly effective for removal.  Has a better UI for novices than 
ComboFix and updates very frequently.

Then dump Norton and install either the newish free Microsoft Security 
Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/) or Avira's 
free AntiVir (http://www.free-av.com/)

Also switch her to Firefox and make sure she has the latest Adobe 
Flash/Reader. Tell her not to skip any of their updates.


Ted Pham

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