What advice for friend bitten by windows scam

[A Future Pilot]

@OP: I would suggest a full wipe and installing Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon. I've gotten both my mother and sister (neither of who are very tech savvy) up and running with Mint 13 and they've been able to adapt to it just fine

[Emegra]

I would suggest a full wipe and installing Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon. I've gotten both my mother and sister (neither of who are very tech savvy) up and running with Mint 13 and they've been able to adapt to it just fine

Thanks for your advice that sounds like a good plan, I used Mint 13 as my main OS for a while and I can understand anyone falling into it easily, but as it happens, she called Microsoft today, who suggested she restore back to a time before the incident and run a virus scan and everything should be ok, she asked me what I thought and I said that they know more about these things than I do so just do what they suggest (a cop out I know).

Personally I think it shows a very cavalier attitude  for peoples security by Micrososft, If it was my PC it would be wiped no matter what they said, but at least the onus is off me now so I'm grateful for that, although I still have concerns


Many thanks


Graeme

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

At the end of the day it's her PC and her data .. I know I wouldn't trust a restore point, restore points themselves can be infected .. and nor would I trust a single simple virus scanner.

bleepingcomput er is full of people who have taken just those steps and STILL have malware problems .. and though I'm not saying they did put anything on there .. you'll never know unless you have a "proper" look.

But her call.

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[Mad Penguin]

Restore point 'might' be clean but unlikely. I've done this many times, if it was a single / trivial infection you might be lucky, but once something has full access to your box, even script kiddies have access to tools that will make your machine almost impossible to clean. But either way, your chances of 'knowing' your box is clean, are zero .. short of a full wipe.

It's interesting she got free advice from M$, they generally charge for support on a per incident basis, and they ain't generally cheap!

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

[Emegra]

Restore point 'might' be clean but unlikely. I've done this many times, if it was a single / trivial infection you might be lucky, but once something has full access to your box, even script kiddies have access to tools that will make your machine almost impossible to clean. But either way, your chances of 'knowing' your box is clean, are zero .. short of a full wipe.

I agree with you 100%, and I still have concerns, but it's not my responsibility anymore, I did tell her that there is still a chance that there is something nasty on her PC and to look out for any unusual activity or behaviour and that she should, copy or move any important data to an external source, she has 16gb of family photos on the laptop, so I've advised her to get and external hard drive and get them copied over for safe keeping.

I know you won't like this Mark but I was gonna give her Zorin, I installed it on a USB pendrive (with persistance)  and I have to say they do a better job of windows than windows, I'm sure it would have worked for her


Graeme

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

I've not really got anything against Zorin per se .. I just don't believe the claims that it will make life easier for new converts from Windows.

IMHO at best there will be the SAME culture shock as any other distro .. at worst it may be MORE confusing because it LOOKS like Windows but doesn't ACT like it.


Do you think someone would be more or less likely to try install a Windows application on Zorin (because it looks like Windows) or Mint (Which is obviously not Windows) ?

do you think people would be more or less confused by foreign looking app names in a Linux menu, or a Windows (looking) one ?

Do you think people would be more likely to look for a C:\ drive on Zorin or Mint ?

etc.

[Emegra]

Do you think someone would be more or less likely to try install a Windows application on Zorin or Mint ?

do you think people would be more or less confused by foreign looking app names in a Linux menu, or a Windowds (looking) one ?

I understand your point on both counts, but maybe just maybe with Zorin they wouldn't kick it into touch before at least giving it a bit of a chance, in this day and age all too often people take one look a something and instantly decide they don't like it and won't even try to understand it because they want in instant fix, no one seems to want to work at anything or learn anything other than what they're "friends" are up to on facebook

although this might sound like a bit of a contradiction on my part, the one thing I definitely don't like about Zorin is that it comes pre-installed with wine but that's easy fixed


Graeme

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Still not convinced .. it may take them an extra 10 seconds to decide they don't like it .. or they'll like it .. but either way I can't see the need to add extra confusion.

[Emegra]

Still not convinced  .. it may take them an extra 10 seconds to decide they don't like it .. or they'll like it .. but either way I can't see the need to add extra confusion.

And I was expecting something like , "you know you're absolutely right Graeme I never thought of it that way, I was completely wrong and  I'll have to listen to you more in future"

but alas we'll just have to agree to disagree


Graeme

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Jeez .. you don't know me yet then .. in my head I'm ALWAYS right

[Emegra]

Jeez .. you don't know me yet then .. in my head I'm ALWAYS right

Well it's nice to know we at least have that in common

[SeZo]

One thing to be mindful is that her OS did not fail her, it was the operator whom failed the OS.
I woud say that it is best if she sticks with Windows. At least till next time.

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

One thing to be mindful is that her OS did not fail her

That *may* or may not be true .. who knows what nasties were on there before the phone call .. It may even have been some malware that gave them her phone number n the first place

I just CANNOT trust Windows any longer .. I probably never could, but now I've stopped trying to kid myself for the sake of perceived convenience.

[Emegra]

One thing to be mindful is that her OS did not fail her, it was the operator whom failed the OS.

That's true, she let herself down, something we're all capable of in a moment of weakness, I think these scam merchants depend on that

It may even have been some malware that gave them her phone number n the first place

I think they just take any number out of the phone book, lets face it if 90% of PC's in world are Windows PC's and I would guess around 90% of households have a PC then they're gonna get it right most of the time, They tried it with me and I have a Linux machine which proves they just take pot luck



Graeme

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

You're both *probably* right .. but that's why I said it "*may* or may not be true"

My point was .. you cannot rule out that it was the OS that let her down .. lets face it, Windows is full of holes and there's a billion people trying to exploit them.