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I feel your pain. Whenever family ask me to look at their computer I spent an hour deleting spyware and such. The worst bit is they do have antivirus and Window

I feel your pain. Whenever family ask me to look at their computer I spent an hour deleting spyware and such. The worst bit is they do have antivirus and Windows defender, but they do nothing to stop it :/ The common advice to stop it before was "don't use IE". Everyone uses Chrome now, and so that's now where everything installs itself (check the extensions and there is usually something dubious). Google even have a tool to remove this stuff: https://www.google.co.uk/chrome/srt/ https://www.google.co.uk/chrome/srt/

cnvogel 12y ago
I had to deinfect a adware infested computer of a colleague recently. In my oppinion, most adware is very eager to include some proper way of uninstalling, just to not be classified as a trojan/virus/... Even if this is completely leaning to persuade the customer NOT TO INSTALL it: "You will loose precious functionality, your computer will get slower, the locusts will invade your country: Are you SURE to deinstall CrapToolbarAdMakeComputerFaster2000? [NO!] [NOT AT ALL!] (yes) [CONTINUE USING ADWARE]" I guess it's done that way so that Microsoft would look like to impair a earnest software business' operation, would they choose to include it in their "evil monopolistic" antivirus software.
- weavie 12y ago
  It is that 5% that refuse to go away and then reinstall themselves when you finally work out how to get rid of them that takes up 95% of the time.
ekianjo 12y ago
> I feel your pain. Whenever family ask me to look at their computer I spent an hour deleting spyware and such. The worst bit is they do have antivirus and Windows defender, but they do nothing to stop it :/ Once I installed Linux for my folks, all these problems magically disappeared.
- weavie 12y ago
  I can't find my InDesign icon... where have you put it?
  - BitExec 12y ago
    - https://alternativeto.net/software/adobe-indesign/?platform=linux https://alternativeto.net/software/adobe-indesign/?platform=... - http://www.opensourcealternative.org/alternatives/graphic-editors/open-source-alternative-to-indesign/ http://www.opensourcealternative.org/alternatives/graphic-ed...
  - weavie 12y ago
    InDesign is the industry standard. There may be loads of OS alternatives, but unfortunately for people who can only just use a mouse and have invested years into learning that one package they just aren't going to be willing to invest a lot of time into exploring the alternatives.
    - normloman 12y ago
      I think the point was, most people like the OPs parents just use their computers for web browsing. And all of today's best web browsers run on linux. I helped my parents switch to linux mint, and it's been fairly successful.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        VLM 12y ago
        "if you aren't using your computer for work" Even that's not much of a challenge. Many years ago when my wife started working at home on her mac (1st gen mac mini so this must be about a decade ago?) corporate IT had a few puzzles to solve, but even a decade ago everything was moving to either web or rdesktop or vnc. If you can get the corporate windows guys to implement a workaround or whatever to allow macs to be used, then its usually a very small jump indeed to linux or freebsd or whatever. I'm struggling to think of a stereotypical desk job that can't be done with a browser and perhaps rdesktop on the side. The exceptions I can think of like 3-D cad would be a problem, but that's not stereotypical desk job work. Also in my experience, school kids, volunteer workers, and grandma are google docs users not office 2010 users. Google is taking over that space quite effectively. The school system has a contract with google such that if you want to edit your essay in office on your computer at home, well, fine, but you'll be exporting into google drive to actually submit the homework, so save yourself some time and annoyance and do the whole thing online.

cnvogel 12y ago

I had to deinfect a adware infested computer of a colleague recently. In my oppinion, most adware is very eager to include some proper way of uninstalling, just to not be classified as a trojan/virus/... Even if this is completely leaning to persuade the customer NOT TO INSTALL it: "You will loose precious functionality, your computer will get slower, the locusts will invade your country: Are you SURE to deinstall CrapToolbarAdMakeComputerFaster2000? [NO!] [NOT AT ALL!] (yes) [CONTINUE USING ADWARE]" I guess it's done that way so that Microsoft would look like to impair a earnest software business' operation, would they choose to include it in their "evil monopolistic" antivirus software.

weavie 12y ago
It is that 5% that refuse to go away and then reinstall themselves when you finally work out how to get rid of them that takes up 95% of the time.

ekianjo 12y ago

> I feel your pain. Whenever family ask me to look at their computer I spent an hour deleting spyware and such. The worst bit is they do have antivirus and Windows defender, but they do nothing to stop it :/ Once I installed Linux for my folks, all these problems magically disappeared.

weavie 12y ago
I can't find my InDesign icon... where have you put it?
- BitExec 12y ago
  - https://alternativeto.net/software/adobe-indesign/?platform=linux https://alternativeto.net/software/adobe-indesign/?platform=... - http://www.opensourcealternative.org/alternatives/graphic-editors/open-source-alternative-to-indesign/ http://www.opensourcealternative.org/alternatives/graphic-ed...
- weavie 12y ago
  InDesign is the industry standard. There may be loads of OS alternatives, but unfortunately for people who can only just use a mouse and have invested years into learning that one package they just aren't going to be willing to invest a lot of time into exploring the alternatives.
  - normloman 12y ago
    I think the point was, most people like the OPs parents just use their computers for web browsing. And all of today's best web browsers run on linux. I helped my parents switch to linux mint, and it's been fairly successful.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
      - VLM 12y ago
        "if you aren't using your computer for work" Even that's not much of a challenge. Many years ago when my wife started working at home on her mac (1st gen mac mini so this must be about a decade ago?) corporate IT had a few puzzles to solve, but even a decade ago everything was moving to either web or rdesktop or vnc. If you can get the corporate windows guys to implement a workaround or whatever to allow macs to be used, then its usually a very small jump indeed to linux or freebsd or whatever. I'm struggling to think of a stereotypical desk job that can't be done with a browser and perhaps rdesktop on the side. The exceptions I can think of like 3-D cad would be a problem, but that's not stereotypical desk job work. Also in my experience, school kids, volunteer workers, and grandma are google docs users not office 2010 users. Google is taking over that space quite effectively. The school system has a contract with google such that if you want to edit your essay in office on your computer at home, well, fine, but you'll be exporting into google drive to actually submit the homework, so save yourself some time and annoyance and do the whole thing online.