Viewing 29 posts - 1 through 29 (of 29 total)
  • Preventing trojans and viruses on grandmothers Win 7 computer
  • paulwf
    Full Member

    Hello,

    My wifes grandmother has managed to get a trojan horse on her PC which has taken a photo and then apparently put a screen up with her picture from the webcam saying she has to pay 100 pounds as she has been looking at illegal material (which she hasn’t).

    She ran Microsoft security essentials (that I had installed a year ago due to a previous infection) which found the trojan and removed it but she wants me to look at it and try and stop it happening in the future.

    Any suggestions on how to do this? It is an Win 7 machine.

    It is mainly her using it but her neighbours 4 year old occasionally plays games on it.

    I was going to add an administrator password as I don’t believe she has one at the minute to try and prevent things being accidentally installed (but installing things accidentally is quite difficult on Win 7).

    Obviously we will be changing all passwords etc.

    Cheers
    Paul

    _tom_
    Free Member

    MSE is fine… tell her not to download stuff that’s blatantly viruses.

    trailertrash
    Full Member

    tell her to keep off the grumble!!!

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    leffeboy
    Full Member

    MSE is fine… tell her not to download stuff that’s blatantly viruses.

    That. There’s also a virus doing the rounds on Skype right now that does exactly this so she needs to know that if anyone sends a link that she wasn’t expecting or where the language is a little strange then don’t open it or ask the person who sent it first? No AV is perfect

    paulwf
    Full Member

    thanks for the help.

    I imagine it must have been Skype as I have looked through her webmail and there aren’t any emails with dodgy links.
    I will try and explain not to click on links but easier said than done.

    Apparently I put MSE on nearly 3 years ago and this is the first time she had had a problem so it has done very well

    johnners
    Free Member

    MSE auto update with a scheduled scan that kicks in some time when the machine is likely to be on, enable auto patching on W7, and create an ordinary user account for day-to-day use. Most problems like this could be avoided if people didn’t routinely use an admin account. And what _tom_ says, though it may not be that obvious to her.

    br
    Free Member

    I’ve always paid for a decent 3rd party security product. Norton can be got for as little as £50 for 2 years cover for 3 PC’s – and will actually run on more (we’ve 4) 😉

    retro83
    Free Member

    MSE is okay, Kaspersky and Avira are (much) better but cost money.

    I know this because I’ve had to fix a bunch of servers this week affected by a virus apparently downloaded from a website advert which bypassed MSE.

    Here are some independent tests:
    http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews

    Drac
    Full Member

    I’ve always paid for a decent 3rd party security product. Norton can be got for as little as £50 for 2 years cover for 3 PC’s – and will actually run on more (we’ve 4)

    So what is the decent one you use?

    MSE I’ve been using on my PC since a reformat, before that Avast which I still use on 2 laptops. Both have been excellent.

    johnners
    Free Member

    Here are some independent tests:
    http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews

    I haven’t waded through much of it, but MSE doesn’t seem to have been included in the last 3 “Real-World Protection Tests” published.

    jota180
    Free Member

    It’s on the last summary report I think johnners

    MSE may not be the best possible [it’s very good though] but given its very low profile and minimal resource use, it’s about the best compromise out there without locking everything down so tight that it starts affecting performance or needs too much input.

    leffeboy
    Full Member

    I’ve always paid for a decent 3rd party security product

    I use business eSet at work and the Skype virus got through last week :(. They got it from someone using Kaspersky as far as I know. Pay all you want but in the end if a user with admin level privileges clicks on something you are in trouble. User education is where it is at.

    Oh, and OpenDNS may sometimes help as that will often block phishing links depending on the site.

    richmars
    Full Member

    +1 the admin login. Should (I think)reduce the chance of installing nasties, plus if it happens, reduces the effect.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Just to add to what others have said.

    If you’ve had a virus, run a scan with Malwarebytes to double check it’s gone.

    Make sure that she’s running the latest versions of Flash and Java, or uninstall them. Educate her regarding the auto-update features of these two apps.

    Consider giving her a user account rather than an administrator account for day-to-day usage. Definitely give the kid her own standard account.

    Some form of bare metal backup might be useful here. “Your PC’s broken? Never mind, I’ll press this magic button and ten minutes later, hey, perfect!” Of course, you’re already backing up her data, right?

    Look into the nature of the infection she’s had. Depending on what it is, a format and reinstall might be safest.

    Take seriously anything that involves keyloggers. There may be a very real risk that any online accounts accessed whilst the infection is present have been compromised. This includes her bank account.

    Paying for AV may, but does not automatically, imply an inherently better product.

    chojin
    Free Member

    All of the above + disable autorun.

    mattsccm
    Free Member

    Assumiing its the fake Met police one its easy to fix. Just do a websearch

    deft
    Free Member

    Bonus low tech option: Put some tape over the webcam

    br
    Free Member

    So what is the decent one you use?

    Norton, and always create an initial backup – that way worse case I can take the PC ‘back-to-new’.

    I’ve managed ‘estates’ where we use to pay Specialists for them to be secured/maintained, never had a problem with any of my systems then either.

    Drac
    Full Member

    Norton is bloody awful though, it hogs down systems and buries itself deep into it. Horrible bit of software.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    I’ve said this before but,

    Generalising; Norton / Symantec AV is, fundamentally, pretty decent. The problem is that they’re very aggressive out of the box – they have to be in order to try and top the comparison tables – and so cane the hell out of a lower-spec system. To get the best out of Norton, a degree of reconfiguring is required. Most people don’t do this, and thus conclude it’s crap.

    That said, I’ve not touched anything Norton for a few years now. This might be an out of date opinion.

    Edukator
    Free Member

    One of the nice things about Windows 8 is how easy it is to remove Norton. I’d still got 6 months free to run but given its utter failure to stop viruses/trojans on Madame’s work laptop I decided to install AVG Free from the outset.

    Malwarebytes and Spybot both found a virus that got in past Norton via my son’s enthusiasm for free games. Kids’ games are often full of horrors.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Don’t give children admin accounts?

    Edukator
    Free Member

    No passwords, no safe search and no parental control on my main PC and so far AVG has stopped everything. Even my son stops if an AVG warning flashes up.

    Madame’s XP laptop has been OK since we installed AVG. When it went in for maintenance the guy found that we’d failed to remove some parts of Norton which explained why it was running slowly. Since he completely removed Norton its back up to speed.

    johnhighfield
    Free Member

    Plus 1 for Kaspersky here.
    It tends to come out in the top for comparison tests & I have paid for it & used it for many years. Barclays were giving it away free (3 user license)for their on line banking.

    samuri
    Free Member

    I keep saying this again and again and getting ignored but I’ll try again anyway.

    Sandboxie. You run the browser in a sand box on your computer. If it pulls down an infection it doesn’t matter because it’s going nowhere. You can go to the most blatently affected site in the world, download a thousand viruses and none of them will hit your computer. Just clear the cache, back to fun you go.

    Install this (there’s a paid version which gives you a slightly better experience) and your wife’s grandmother can browse porn to her heart’s content.

    http://www.sandboxie.com/

    piemonster
    Full Member

    minus 1 for Norton

    Utter junk

    paulwf
    Full Member

    Thanks for the replied I have had a look at the PC now, it somehow has Norton reinstalled so she must have clicked something at some point. She also admitted to clicking links from joke emails from friends which I told her not to do in future even if it looks safe.

    I have removed admin rights from the User account and created an administrator account to prevent future installations.

    Will give it a check with Malwarebytes to see if anything else is present, there were a lot of Java exploits on the PC. I couldn’t find any evidence of the trojan horse, but I had already uninstalled Norton so maybe she had used that to find it.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Variants of Norton get bundled with various applications these days. Bloody annoying foisterware. I just reinstalled Java here and it “recommended” I install the Ask toolbar and change my homepage / search engine. I don’t think I’d be quite so irritated if it was remotely related to what I was installing.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Oh,

    It’s worth running TFC before you do any malware scans; little point scanning a load of temp files, Internet cache and such, it’ll run a lot faster if you bin the crud first.

    Note that it’ll close running applications, so make sure you’ve no unsaved work open when you do it.

Viewing 29 posts - 1 through 29 (of 29 total)

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