There are lots of articles with tips for parents on how to keep their kids safe online. But what about those of us who are the resident computer geeks in the family – how do we keep our parents and other family members safe from getting viruses and falling prey to phishing attacks?
We’ve all been through this – a member of our family somehow manages to get a virus or fill their computer with adware, and then we have to fix it. Of course, nobody did anything wrong or visited any bad sites – it just “happened.” We spend hours trying to fix it, and when we finally do, we realize that we want those hours of our life back. Or worse yet – it’s so bad that we can’t fix it, and need to reinstall everything for them.
I’m not implying that our parents are in any way unintelligent; I think the problem is that they don’t take these threats seriously enough.
So how do you – the geek in the family – prevent this from happening? One answer that you’ll hear from the geek community is “install Linux.” If you can get away with that without the guilt trip, go for it, but here are some tips for Windows users – read on.
Switch them to OpenDNS.
If you’re not familiar with OpenDNS, they’re a DNS provider – but they go above and beyond basic DNS resolving. They provide some added security and usability, and they help make your internet connection feel faster due to their massive cache. Plus, it’s really easy to use them: Just switch your DNS servers to theirs. You can also customize their service – they provide content filtering, including phishing and malware sites, typo correction (for example, they redirect “google.cmo” to “google.com.”), and a handful of other goodies. It even works with dynamic IP addresses.
Install a good antivirus solution.
My parents were using whatever antivirus software came on their computers when they purchased them – a mix of Norton and McAfee. At one point, they had even allowed the subscriptions to lapse. While these are good solutions, there are better ones out there. My personal favorite is Eset‘s NOD32. It doesn’t bog down performance with a ton of bloat like other antivirus applications, and it’s generally reviewed better than the big names. ESET also makes a package called Smart Security that has both antivirus and firewall capabilities. And at $40 for antivirus, or $60 for antivirus and firewall, it’s very reasonably priced.
Install an ad-ware utility.
Ad-Aware is a good one, but you probably already have a preference. I also recommend Windows Defender. Don’t forget to configure regularly-scheduled scans.
Switch to Firefox.
Install Firefox. Don’t forget to install the Google toolbar and Ad-Block Plus. I’m not going to get into the Firefox vs IE debate (although I prefer Firefox), but this combination seems to do a really good job of keeping the malware sites at bay. You might get some resistance to this, Internet Explorer is familiar and they may be averse to trying new things, but if you install it and show them that it works just like IE, they’ll be fine with it.
Configure Automatic Updates to be… Automatic.
Make sure automatic updates are turned on and set them to be fully automatic.
Install a router.
If they aren’t already behind a router, get one for them. Seriously, they’re like $40 at your local electronics stores. Any kind of broadband router is fine. As a geek, you probably already know you should do this.
Keep checking!
Vigilance is probably the most important practice here. Whenever you go to visit, take a few minutes to poke around their computer and make sure everything’s looking good – the antivirus database should be up-to-date, all the applications you installed should still be running, and Windows should be up-to-date. Maybe even run a virus or spyware scan if you have the time. It’s better to take an extra 10 minutes during a visit than to have to spend hours fixing everything up when it’s least convenient for you.
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