Stupid ebay/amazon question

[Ben Scott]

On 6/29/06, Fred <puissante at lrc.puissante.com> wrote:
> Alas, if you have kids in your home all bets are off there.

  So true...

> And *her* computer is so infected
> with malware it won't even boot anymore.

  I find disk volume images take care of that problem nicely.  And
after they loose their data the 20th time or so, they start to learn
about things like the importance of backups... *evil grin*.

> I used to bother with explaining that Active X is the greatest evil since
> Stalin, but most wouldn't know an Active X applet if it bit them in the ass,
> let alone how to disable it in IE. So, I tell them not to bother. Just don't
> use IE.

  If needed, one can lock down IE so that all those really bad ideas
are disabled, and enforce said lock down so that users cannot bypass
it.  Contact me off-list if interested in details (as it's really
off-topic here).

  Of course, that doesn't solve the problem of the IE bug-of-the-month
club, but Firefox isn't exactly spotless in that department, either...
:-(

  Running as an unprivileged user (on any OS) solves a lot of problems
right now, but I suspect even that won't last forever.

  Certainly, keeping sensitive data off any Internet-connected PC is
the way to go.  The "air gap firewall" remains the only one without
known exploits.

  Of course, given the context of this discussion, I don't really
think isolating sensitive data applies.  We're talking about an email
address here, Fred.  :-)

-- Ben