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

The answer is obvious.
You married her. From that moment on anything and everything that can go wrong is your fault.
Just ask her. I bet she'll agree with me.
Good luck.
Hugger

 

You just summed up the reason to not get married very nicely

 

Unfortunately, yes, it's your fault assuming you gave consent to your wife to use your computer, then you should ensure the account she uses is secured against anything she may do, whether intentionally or not, that could incur infection.

What can you do?

So many possibilities, but if you do nothing else, at the very least provide her with a separate, Standard User account. Do not let her (or anyone else for that matter) use an Administrator account.

Maybe consider Sandboxie, and configure it a bit from its defaults to force-sandbox the browsers and allow only selected sandboxed programs to access the Internet. There are lots of threads in this forum offering great advice.

Kindly ask her to NOT randomly click on unsolicited pop-ups or any email links.

 

I too would suggest a separate user account that's already configured.

 

hahaha!

 

If your wife, or whoever, borrows your car etc, & causes damage, or worse. How is that your fault, even if you gave them permission to use it ?

 

Car - computer analogies never work that well.

 

It's worth trying I would anyway

 

lol fair enough.

 

It is your fault.
Don't fight the problem, just fix it and go on to something important. Sometines getting each a computer solves such problems as to fault.
Jerry

 

In my experience the moment I touch someone elses computer any problem they have for the next 10 years is a result of whatever it is I did.

"omg you updated flash and now i have a virus"

"omg you updated java 3 months ago and now i keep getting bsods"

"fix it fix it fix it"

 

That's a logical argument and as such quite pointless when dealing with wives

 

Oh my god, yes, lol. With me though, it's "Ever since you put this security on here, I can't see see videos/can't get websites to work/can't do this/can't do that/get these messages".

For the love of the Almighty, sometimes I just want to hang them and myself from the tallest tree I think I have fixed this perhaps though, with the install of Returnil. Now, the only things that can execute are programs already on the disk, and if something still manages to get screwed up, a reboot gets rid of the issue.

 

That's why when most people ask me how to secure their computers I just say "Unless you want to put the work into understanding and setting something up just run an AV"

 

Well, part of it is my fault in that I simply just do not understand the likes of things like Comodo D+ and other, to me, complicated things. I'm weird in that the more security I use, the more paranoid I get, lol. I guess it's just because I look at all those rules, config files and so on, and don't see anything but possible holes, holes which I can't be sure of because I can't interpret the jargon. That's why I've always tried (and usually with good results) to keep things absolutely bare minimum and simple. I confess that I'm going through another "Wilder's phase" in that I now have a software firewall too to deal with.

 

I'm just frustrated because I know exactly what I want out of a security model but I'm unable to implement it because I'm learning Java and I'd rather not write a security program in Java lol so I'll have to familiarize myself with C/++ and by the time I get around to writing it (2 years?) I'll be surprised if someone else hasn't =p

 

Lol, I'd be surprised if someone has, Hungry. I don't see a lot of true change in security vendors, except for use of the cloud. It's still pretty much a signature based, blacklist this, whitelist that world for them. I have to say that Defensewall, Sandboxie and Returnil are the ones with people who are ahead in the game, and even they suffer the occasional penetration. Still though, the vast majority of malware doesn't seem to be able to break through these sorts of programs, so, for now at least, they seem the safest way to go.

 

Oh I'm not worried about a company like MCAfee or Norton or even Microsoft coming up with the program ideas. It's solo devs like Tzuk or Ilya who are going to end up beating me to it =p

I wonder what kind of sales Sandboxie/DefenseWall see.

 

I don't know, but, the lifetime license models of some of these programs worry me.

 

How so?

 

I just don't see them as a sound business practice is all. As I've stated before in other threads, if the company or person has other products that do equally well or better, or money is not an issue, that is one thing. But, it pretty much means your customers won't be financially supporting you again and, if another company comes along and buys the product/company out, customers end up dealing with agreements not being honored and other negative things.

 

Yeah I figured that's what you meant - I agree. If I were giving out lifetime licenses I'd want to have a job on the side =p or that would be my job on the side.

 

Of course it is your fault the same as it was my fault when my wife's laptop got infected. I fixed the problem by installing Sandboxie and forcing all internet facing apps to run in the sandbox. If she wants to save something she downloaded, she asks me and I do it for her. No further problems so far.

 

IMO it would be your fault, as it is your machine. If you knowingly let a someone use it who does not understand what to do, then you are at fault for allowing that. Especially if you have a certain systematic approach to how you stay secure, and they don't know what that is.

A few approaches that would work in such situations, ones I have personally used.

1. install shadow defender, and for those times when she uses it for more than just a few minutes, enter shadow mode, just remember to save your stuff first and to inform her where to save things to etc that will be safe across the reboot

2. have an account for her, which is user level only. Apply SRP or AppLocker, and only allow the programs she needs to run.

3. (my favorite) start a VM up, full screen, just for her. She can have her own environment, you can set some basic security in it (UAC etc), she can print etc, do things pretty much like normal, except it is all contained. I wish there were a way to lock the real system while the VM was running, that way if she accidentily got out of the VM into the real OS, she would not be able to do anything. Maybe there is a way, don't really know.

4. use a VHD with a basic OS on it. It does require a reboot, but is pretty easy to do, and is about as fast as the real OS when a VM might be a little sluggish depending on hardware.

Sul.

 

Norton IS, malwarebytes pro, norton DNS, CHrome browser, UAC set to max and a fresh image. Its worked for my wife's laptop and I've never had a problem.