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Just wanted to let all the techies marvel at this one.
I had an acquiantence talk to me last night, telling me about her computer problems. Apparently her computer's been randomly restarting, iTunes would loop a song for hours, even after it was closed, keyboard was inputting funky characters, webpages being redirected, etc.
I broke the bad news and said she probably had a virus. Probably several by this point, including spyware and malware, and if she'd run a virus scan recently. Her response?
"What's that?"
So I spent some time trying to explain the concept of virii, spyware, malware, and all that fun stuff, and that you needed an anti-virus program to find and get rid of them. I gave her a list of programs to get right then, including AVG Free and the such, and told her to go download and run them ASAP. I told her to afterwards to also change all her passwords, as spyware might have harvested her passwords already, so her security is compromised. Her response?
"Oh, I already did that."
That's right, she changed all her passwords before plugging the leak. She wanted to reformat, but didn't have a system disk included, since it was a Gateway, so she wanted to make a system disk now to do it with. That, or just give up, get a new computer, and move her files over so she didn't lose anything. Move her files, without fixing her old computer. Yeah, instant reinfection.
She had difficulty grasping the concept of the anti-virus actually removing the virus, as she'd repeatedly asked how to get the virus off her computer, and wanted to know what a virus could do. "My computer's doing this, could that be from a virus?" Repeat ad nauseum.
She also thought that someone had physically placed the virus on her computer, and talked about "kicking their ass when she found them." Then I managed an upgrade to understanding that they didn't personally place it on, which she took to mean someone hacked in and did it. I tried to tell about corrupted websites and such, but that went way over her head.
Anyway, marvel at the fact that this person's in college, in their mid-to-late 20s, and is that clueless.
I had an acquiantence talk to me last night, telling me about her computer problems. Apparently her computer's been randomly restarting, iTunes would loop a song for hours, even after it was closed, keyboard was inputting funky characters, webpages being redirected, etc.
I broke the bad news and said she probably had a virus. Probably several by this point, including spyware and malware, and if she'd run a virus scan recently. Her response?
"What's that?"
So I spent some time trying to explain the concept of virii, spyware, malware, and all that fun stuff, and that you needed an anti-virus program to find and get rid of them. I gave her a list of programs to get right then, including AVG Free and the such, and told her to go download and run them ASAP. I told her to afterwards to also change all her passwords, as spyware might have harvested her passwords already, so her security is compromised. Her response?
"Oh, I already did that."
That's right, she changed all her passwords before plugging the leak. She wanted to reformat, but didn't have a system disk included, since it was a Gateway, so she wanted to make a system disk now to do it with. That, or just give up, get a new computer, and move her files over so she didn't lose anything. Move her files, without fixing her old computer. Yeah, instant reinfection.
She had difficulty grasping the concept of the anti-virus actually removing the virus, as she'd repeatedly asked how to get the virus off her computer, and wanted to know what a virus could do. "My computer's doing this, could that be from a virus?" Repeat ad nauseum.
She also thought that someone had physically placed the virus on her computer, and talked about "kicking their ass when she found them." Then I managed an upgrade to understanding that they didn't personally place it on, which she took to mean someone hacked in and did it. I tried to tell about corrupted websites and such, but that went way over her head.
Anyway, marvel at the fact that this person's in college, in their mid-to-late 20s, and is that clueless.
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