Lifelock, Carbonite etc. etc. what's the best.

[SilvererSHO]

I know there are a few IT guys on here so I figured this may be the place to get a decent answer by someone other than a 15 year old on Reddit.  What's the best out there right now for family protection?  My beloved 71 year old Mother who always sees the best in everyone fell for a ramsomeware attack on her Apple Laptop.  "Tony" from Apple in India was kind enough to put his number on her screen and was able to get her all fixed up after she allowed him to remote access her computer and then paid "Tony" $200 for his services.  As far as I know he had remote access for about 30 hours before I caught wind of what she did through my Sister (it just came up in conversation with my Mon and Sister) and we told her to unplug her modem.  He informed her that her virus protection was expired and installed a new one for her so I assume that's a keylogger of some sort.  Six years worth of whatever she has done on her laptop is now out there.  Her e-mail is what we're the most worried about.  It's a sad experience when an elderly person is duped like this and you as her son have to try and explain to her what she did and try to ride the fine line of telling her some things aren't as they appear when you want to scream "how could you be so naive and stupid"!!!  Now she's in complete denial by saying things like "you have to have a password to access my email" well, not when you allow someone to remote access it and claiming nothing is in her email but a few pictures because it's evidently setup to archive her inbox after 30 days.  She's embarrassed and just thinks nothing is going to happen and it will all go away.  Frustrating as hell.  My Sister just called today and told me her husband just got a call from Mastercard about a fraudulent $1,000 transaction at Sears.  Bits and pieces of information from her email over 6 years I'm assuming.

[FoMoCoSHO]

Imo lifelock is garbage.

I have an ID theft rider on my home insurance which costs pennies per day and covers me for $1,000,000 in the event my identity is stolen.

[SilvererSHO]

Imo lifelock is garbage.

I have an ID theft rider on my home insurance which costs pennies per day and covers me for $1,000,000 in the event my identity is stolen.

Interesting.  You still get to clean up the mess though, correct?  I can't imagine how painful that would be to have to do.

[ZSHO]

I would start by securing your Home Network to a stronger encryption as WPA or WPA2 which an enhanced revision of WPA providing stronger security settings inconjunction with Norton which has worked pretty good IMO.
I think many people neglect to update their Network settings and find themselves more vulnerable to your Network being compromised even with an antivirus installed ...

If you want something safer you can always get your kind mom a chromebook which is safer alternative for web browsing. Z   

[FoMoCoSHO]

Imo lifelock is garbage.

I have an ID theft rider on my home insurance which costs pennies per day and covers me for $1,000,000 in the event my identity is stolen.

Interesting.  You still get to clean up the mess though, correct?  I can't imagine how painful that would be to have to do.

No, my attorney cleans up the mess and insurance covers the costs.

Reality check....no matter what anyone tells you, no signature, no liability.

Dispute everything and make them prove it.

Everything is a contract and with the exception of your birth certificate you can't be attached to a contract without consent.

[SilvererSHO]

Imo lifelock is garbage.

I have an ID theft rider on my home insurance which costs pennies per day and covers me for $1,000,000 in the event my identity is stolen.

Interesting.  You still get to clean up the mess though, correct?  I can't imagine how painful that would be to have to do.

No, my attorney cleans up the mess and insurance covers the costs.

Reality check....no matter what anyone tells you, no signature, no liability.

Dispute everything and make them prove it.

Everything is a contract and with the exception of your birth certificate you can't be attached to a contract without consent.

Good to know, thanks.  I'm going to look into this with my insurance company.  Mind if I ask what insurance you have?


I use a VPN at my house.  I don't know what she has.

[FoMoCoSHO]

Imo lifelock is garbage.

I have an ID theft rider on my home insurance which costs pennies per day and covers me for $1,000,000 in the event my identity is stolen.

Interesting.  You still get to clean up the mess though, correct?  I can't imagine how painful that would be to have to do.

No, my attorney cleans up the mess and insurance covers the costs.

Reality check....no matter what anyone tells you, no signature, no liability.

Dispute everything and make them prove it.

Everything is a contract and with the exception of your birth certificate you can't be attached to a contract without consent.

Good to know, thanks.  I'm going to look into this with my insurance company.  Mind if I ask what insurance you have?


I use a VPN at my house.  I don't know what she has.

American Family.

[StealBlueSho]

In all honesty most of those services are not worth the money.

Unfortunately phishing scams like the one your grandma fell for are where the issues happens. It's called social engineering and elderly fall for it constantly.

Couple things to help...

1: Get an insurance policy through your homeowners. This will cover you in the event something does happen.

2: Use a good antivirus/malware/ransomware software. Norton's or McAfee are decent.

3. Never trust someone calling you or telling you there is a problem. Hang up, and call your ISP back if you believe there is a chance something is wrong. Microsoft, Apple, or any other vender will NEVER call you. Period. To tell you there is a problem.

4: Never use the same password twice. And never use common combinations such as your name and birth year, or anything personally identifiable. Get a random password generator.... and then use an encrypted password locker.

5:) If you buy things online, use a credit card, not your debit/Visa card.

6: Never download anything you don't know.

7: there is more.... but I don't have time to write it up...




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[SHOdded]

Hard to put this in motion unless you regularly assist that special person in your life.  Even then it feels like being a hamster on a mill.

[FoMoCoSHO]

Hard to put this in motion unless you regularly assist that special person in your life.  Even then it feels like being a hamster on a mill.

True but its generally less work up front being proactive than it is being reactive when SHTF.

I've been through these issues with my Grandma (RIP Grandma) and I'm currently going through it with my Dad. Switched Dad to Linux and Thunderbird which has excellent built in spam protection. Doing this pretty much stopped all the nonsense and he's had no issue going from a Windows environment to Cinnamon Linux as it functions very much like windows.

Teamviewer is an excellent free tool to manage systems from a distance.

[StealBlueSho]

Hard to put this in motion unless you regularly assist that special person in your life.  Even then it feels like being a hamster on a mill.

True but its generally less work up front being proactive than it is being reactive when SHTF.

I've been through these issues with my Grandma (RIP Grandma) and I'm currently going through it with my Dad. Switched Dad to Linux and Thunderbird which has excellent built in spam protection. Doing this pretty much stopped all the nonsense and he's had no issue going from a Windows environment to Cinnamon Linux as it functions very much like windows.

Teamviewer is an excellent free tool to manage systems from a distance.

100% agree with TeamViewer. My grandfather is 85 and still uses his computer for everything. He got scammed out of $200 by the same scam. His credit card company even called when the charge was going through since it originates from Paris. These scammers had him so concerned about someone hacking his system, he told his credit card company that he needed the charge to go through to fix his computer.

In any event, at this point any windows updates that happen still throw him off... so I use team viewer to quickly assist him...

Fwiw... he still uses a dos program called
"My Money" from 1985 to balance his bank accounts... at this point it's running in DOS Box with the diskette drive emulated to the USB stick in the back of the desktop....

I remind him that his bank account software is so old, no one would suspect it to have anything valuable lol...

I wish I could get him onto a chrome book or similar but at this point... if an icon changes he sends out the bat signal...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[FoMoCoSHO]

SS, did you wipe and reinstall her system?

If it is not password protected I would handle that ASAP as well.

For Windoze folks a 17 character password strengthens security greatly.

Also you should never utilize an admin account except for admin stuff.

Regular user for regular usage and if windoze blocks you for a known program wanting to make a change you can override with the admin password.

[Macgyver]

Thumb Drive. Portable Hard drive. Not just one but many backups. 90 minute fire resistant gun safe and Safety deposit box.

[SilvererSHO]

SS, did you wipe and reinstall her system?

If it is not password protected I would handle that ASAP as well.

For Windoze folks a 17 character password strengthens security greatly.

Also you should never utilize an admin account except for admin stuff.

Regular user for regular usage and if windoze blocks you for a known program wanting to make a change you can override with the admin password.

No, I'm not too familiar with Apple.  I'm the only person I know who's never owned a single Apple product, ever.  I work in an engineering environment with Windows machines.  She's supposedly taking it to the Apple Store to have them take care of it.

[SilvererSHO]

In all honesty most of those services are not worth the money.

Unfortunately phishing scams like the one your grandma fell for are where the issues happens. It's called social engineering and elderly fall for it constantly.

Couple things to help...

1: Get an insurance policy through your homeowners. This will cover you in the event something does happen.

2: Use a good antivirus/malware/ransomware software. Norton's or McAfee are decent.

3. Never trust someone calling you or telling you there is a problem. Hang up, and call your ISP back if you believe there is a chance something is wrong. Microsoft, Apple, or any other vender will NEVER call you. Period. To tell you there is a problem.

4: Never use the same password twice. And never use common combinations such as your name and birth year, or anything personally identifiable. Get a random password generator.... and then use an encrypted password locker.

5:) If you buy things online, use a credit card, not your debit/Visa card.

6: Never download anything you don't know.

7: there is more.... but I don't have time to write it up...




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

3. Never trust someone calling you or telling you there is a problem. Hang up, and call your ISP back if you believe there is a chance something is wrong. Microsoft, Apple, or any other vender will NEVER call you. Period. To tell you there is a problem.

Funny you mention this.  7-8 years ago when I had my first Smart Phone I installed a caller ID spoof app and played a practical joke on my wife with it.  Before I went out to my parents I installed one on my current phone.  As I was sitting at the table trying to explain to her that she had been duped I typed in my uncles number down the road and called her.  She has a caller ID that announces the name of who is calling and also displays the number.  She answers the phone with her back to me and I answer "hi Mom" she turns around and sees it's me calling her and has this deer in the headlights look and hangs up.  "See Mom, nothing is always as it appears".  "It took me about a minute to install a free app to do this and if I can do it a full time hacker can certainly do this and more".  "So if your caller ID says IRS, US Social Security Dept. or your local bank that doesn't necessarily means it's them does it".  She's embarrassed, defensive and doesn't want to accept what has happened so I'm trying to get my point across with her.