If my wife uses my computer and infects it, is it still my fault?

According to her yes.
So anything to protect my computer from my wife?

 

Yes. It is your fault.

 

A password on your account

 

No its not your fault or your wifes fault.Its what ever the infection is fault.

 

Use Returnil System Safe free to virtualize every boot.

 

another option: create a limited user account, enable parental controls (maybe future versions will haven marital too) only allowing certain progs. Disable scripting in browser.

 

Yes it is your fault, your wife looks at too much pornography and you my friend must change her tone with your ultra manliness and skills with the ladies.

 

I agree with her...it's your fault....

lock the pc in a 300 pound steel box and put the key in an underground chamber 2m below the surface.. .. just kidding....

use open dns parental control, shadow defender, sandboxie and macrium reflect...or...sandboxie, spyshelter, panda cloud antivirus,malwarebytes antimalware, hitman pro, firefox browser with adblock plus and wot as add-ons and macrium reflect...or ...eset smart security, sandboxie, malwarebytes antimalware, hitman pro, firefox browser with adblock plus and wot as add-ons and macrium reflect..

 

use a solid security setup with system hardening

create a Limited user account for your Wife with SRP and sandboxie for surfing

also if you want

you can Use Ubuntu In virtual Box for your wife surfing

 

system restore, applocker.. I think that's the best way?

 

Its your fault for letting her use it. Come up with some complex password she will never guess and there you go.

 

Yes- it is most definitely your fault, and even asking this question is a total insult. I suggest that you run out today and try to make it up to her (we like jewelry, and please make sure that it sparkles).

 

Fault as you're describing it cuts both ways. If you're the system administrator, the one who takes care of the PCs in your home in this instance, you'd be at fault for allowing her to have enough system control that she can compromise it. In reality, there's lots of fault to go around:
Microsoft for PCs that are configured to be vulnerable out of the box.
Security apps more concerned with the bottom line than the Pcs they protect.
The scum that write malicious code in the first place.
Users for not understanding their PCs and how they work.
Microsoft for designing operating systems that created the above users.
Assigning blame is basically pointless as it lands on all involved.

There is no single correct way to secure a PC or a user account. Every method is a tradeoff in some way. Regardless of the method you end up choosing, make a full system backup after you get that PC cleaned this time and save yourself some future headaches. As for your wife, if she refuses to take responsibility for the results of her actions, then she should be required to use a limited account or to be restricted from altering the system using other available means. It's probably going to be fighting words, but I'd tell her that if she can't/won't accept responsibility for the results of her actions, altering/infecting the system in this case, then she won't be allowed the ability to do it (no installs, no changing settings, etc). Windows design has it wrong. Administrative privelege isn't a right. It's an ability that's earned and learned. If you're held responsible and have to clean up the mess, then it's your right to impose any restrictions that you choose.

 

You are not alone. We share one PC here at home, if ever my PC gets infected or destroyed, I was always blamed by my mother and brothers even though it's their fault.

 

lol I'd say it's MS's fault =p

Get an AV, secure your browser, run EMET.

 

Yes it is, it's still your computer. I suggest you dual-boot it and install any user-friendly Linux distro

 

I had a similar situation, although I couldn't be blamed. My Grand Daughters computer was constantly getting infected big time testing my abilities to fix the trojans. I installed Shadow Defender and told them to access it every time they were about to go on line. When they shut down anything they did was erased. End of problem.

 

Actually if you go with a non-user friendly one it will cut back on problems even more. Seriously though boot from a Linux CD and give her a flash drive to save files to.

I once saw a bumper sticker that said, "If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?" If you're married the answer is yes.

 

That's all you need to know if you value a quiet life.

Returnil is a good way to protect your precious system from the more reckless users.

 

Is this by chance a reference to the "if a tree falls in the forest" joke?

On a serious note I would recommend creating a separate "user" account for her. A limited user account is safer and it will isolate malware that is account specific (some fake AV are only active in the account they initially install in).

It sounds like she's not tech savvy so any changes you make need to be non-intrusive. Use a completely automated security suite like Norton Internet Security that never asks the user a question.

 

Lots of fault to go around:

1. It is your fault because you had a weak link in your security.

2. It's her fault because she probably is the weak link in your security. Got to get her off the happy clicker train maybe.

3. It's the fault of MS for making us have to resort to doing all this nonsense to protect ourselves.

4. It's the malware authors fault for just being the creative little bugger he or she is and causing mischief.

*Shameless plug in 3..2..1*

Get yourself Returnil, set it to boot into the virtual system every time. Create the virtual disk so you can save documents and files and all that jazz. Set the "Trust only programs from the real disk" to ON....after you clean the infection please

Get a firewall (I use Outpost Security Suite Free) that's both inbound and outbound. Make sure you've got a good AV on board (Panda Free for me), try to surf with Javascript off. There's an extension called "JS Switch" for Firefox that turns scripting on and off with a click. Between the anti-executable in Returnil and a good, web-scanning AV, you're probably going to be just fine.

If you were to add something like MBAM real-time to this, you're going to have a hard time getting accidentally infected..I'd say a very hard time.

 

You're a user. That means security is virtually never your responsibility or your fault.

 

I disagree..to an extent. No, you as a user should not have to and can't be expected to deal with security software and answering 20 freaking pop-ups when you run a program. However, you as a user do have some responsibility to know better than to click on random flashing banners and to not click on things asking you to run when you aren't even doing anything (the "I'm surfing the net and suddenly a pop-up tells me to run a scan in the middle of my screen" scenario).

 

Not really. Microsoft's own statistics show that users are the most common attack vector. That tells you two things:

1) Common sense isn't that common (or useful)

2) Microsoft knows common sense isn't that common and should secure their OS accordingly.

If we were to extend the OSI security model to include a "User" layer it would be right above the application layer. Is that where you want your security? Nope. You want it way down low.

Users should not (and moreover should not) ever ever have any interaction with security software unless they're not actually users and are in fact IT admins. A user should never have to perform some mental-check to see if a file is legit.

EDIT: lol in retrospect if I were to add "User" to a security model it probably wouldn't be OSI but that's besides the point >_>

 

I won't disagree that MS plays a huge part in the problems of today, but I'm not willing to pat a user on the head after they purposefully clicked the flashing "Win a free iPad!" banner, got a drive-by, and still filled out the damn form giving their address, phone number and all that crap..and then smile down on them and say "Aww..that's okay, it's not your fault, Microsoft should have shut down your internet connection when you pointed your cursor at the pretty blinking light"....not going to happen, friend.

We can argue for the next month over all the ways MS went wrong, but I'm not going to just let idiots slide by and not take some responsibility for their actions. There's enough of that outside of the computing world thank you very much.

Edit. Btw, I'm not asking for users to look at a file and try to figure out if malware is hiding in it..hell, most experts can't even do that. I'm simply asking, for once in their lives, to think before they click, and try not to fall for what is usually very, very trivial to avoid.