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User wants porn

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by jdclyde

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Got a home user, using his personal computer from his house, using his personal internet connection. No kids, so that is not a concern either.

Nothing he is using or doing is work related, just a "case of beer" side job.

The user wants to "safely surf porn". This puts me in a new situation, as this isn't exactly what they teach you in network management classes. :0

Which browser is the most secure for this activity?
IE with everything patched and java/activex/scripting turned off?
FireFox?
Opra?
I have never seen this as a selling point of a browser before. "We do porn better!" ;\

He has two systems, one Win2k and one WinXPpro and he will be using both.
I tried talking him into a linux distro, but he was not interested.
I tried talking him into "user" account, but he was not interested. Didn't want to have to deal with multiple logins. ~sigh~

So he is not making things easy on me, and I am tired of having to remove malware all the time! (yes, I take in my own keyboard and mouse! :0 ) Back to school now and I have my boys full time now, I just don't have time to keep messing with this!

Just stopping supporting the guy will cause hard feelings, so I would like to just lock the system down as much as possible.

Any ideas? I know, this is a strange one! :p
[i]
(For the topic I was torn between net security and windows, but ended up siding with security.)

349 replies

by tig2

Push him to the Zone Suite, go with Zone Free if you ABSOLUTELY must.

Install that puppy and then go to www.grc.com to insure that he is shielded. Make any required changes until he IS shielded. I am certain that you have other malware sniffers installed. Teach him how to use them.

Set the firewall to not allow incoming traffic- configure for blocked and tell me if you have any problems with this through Zone- I have a tutorial.

You might want to also consider hiding the Admin account and creating a super user but I don't know enough about either the system or the user to know if this is do-able.

Good luck!

by danlm

chuckle, i was told this was the safest way. No popups.

roflmao

I cant beleive I answered this

Dan

by jdclyde

looking at the site, it is for creating a vpn between you and your destination to keep people from sniffing your traffic. Does it really work for hubby? :p

It is people at the other end I am concerned about!

Yeah, zone alarm, AVG, AdAware, and S&D will all be on the system.

I haven't looked at the whole zone alarm package. Guess I should see what that would add to the mix.

I really should take the time to learn how to mess around with disk images. Have heard about booting from a shadow image each time, so any changes are not saved. Wonder what that would do for me?

by tbernhar

Tell the person to either get a separate DSL (or pay for 2 ip addresses), put the system on one and the rest of the house on the the other one (with a Cable/DSL Router of course). The get one of the many bootable Linux CD Rom packages and customize it for him to run as a Koisk (I.E. no password, boots and immediately loads a browser).

Separates the system from the rest of the house, non-windows OS (cuts down on a lot of the virus problems), and even if it does get infected a re-boot fixes it.

by w2ktechman

He will also need to be informed of ID theft and precautions as well. But this will restrict it to stupidity instead of full on viral infections

by mjd420nova

I've had to clean out so many systems that it isn't funny anymore. I know of no way to stop the nasty adware, spybots and trojans that infected those systems. I've seen all manner of firewalls, blockers and transparent systems and none, repeat none were successful in keeping the crap out. Worst case is to get a trojan which also seems to be the most damaging and the most common affliction. The only cure was to wipe the drive and re-install the OS. I do have one corporate office that has set aside one machine for the employees to play on, and it gets a clean reload weekly as it always has a trojan and tons of spyware, thank goodness it's on a DSL line all by itself or the whole network would have been infected. Maybe that's the only approach, a small system just for that purpose, mounted in a closet somewhere, preferably on a dial up or segregated cable or DSL. Do not ever let it connect to anyones network unless you like to spend hours and hours trying to straighten out the mess. And have the boot CD ready at hand. I don't think you'll get more that 15 minutes operation before the system goes off into left field and takes you to some site that offers to clean out the bugs, for a fee. Good luck

by jdclyde

if your fishing, that is. :D

And like I said, this is a home system for just someone I know, not someone through work. Nothing else on the network to infect.

Thanks for the ideas.

by w2ktechman

of the risks involved. It may be his choice, but mention keyloggers, ID theft, etc. You may want to go through a whole spew of things to protect, at bare minimum
Antispyware
Antivirus
Firewall
Use a credit card with a low limit, or one that you have to pay into beforehand
Watch for the personal information being asked for.
Before hitting the site, or opening an account, look through running processes, after hitting the site and again after enrollment, look again and compare.
If you do a good job in scaring him from that, then you have to do nothing else. If not, he has a lot of downloading and scanning and things to look into

by jdclyde

I don't know if he is using news groups, or just randomly looking around. :0 Never thought to ask where he is going and how (really didn't want that much information, ya know?)

by jdclyde

I see the VPN is set up to THEM, and THEY act as a proxy for you so nothing gets pack to you or who you are. Interesting.

Wonder how much latency and overhead this adds onto a connection?

$99 a year. Need to look at the rest of the features.

Thanks mae!

by maecuff

I knew my husband's obessive need for complete and total privacy would come in handy one day. :)

by nicknielsen

Runs your web browser inside a disposable sandbox. I haven't personally used it, but a friend running a very successful PC sales/repair business swears by it. And it's free.

http://www.sandboxie.com/

Disclaimer: Boilerplate legal jargon

by jmgarvin

Hmmm...I think:

A) Firefox
B) Turn off ActiveX, java, and javascript
C) Disallow all cookies
D) Set the cache size to something very small
E) ZoneAlarm Firewall
F) MS OneCare

I really haven't a clue how to really approach this as he won't run as a user...This is just ugly.

by jdclyde

I think it is about time for some "tough love". Tell him what he NEEDS to do, not what he WANTS to do.

I HATE when a user tries telling me a solution that they want. Tell me what your end result is and I will find a way for you to get there!

Wonder if I could get him to run a linux live CD? Been wanting to load feather linux on a flash drive anyways. Going to have to get that going and then show it do him.

I am so tired of wipe and loads!

If I get that going, my next discussion would be how to lock down a linux distro MORE to only allow a browser.

by hal 9000

Would it be easier to have a spare Drive with a Clone on it sitting around in a Caddy and Restore the Image on a regular basis?

Personally I would go with one of the lesser known browsers like Avant Browser just because it isn't heavily used so it's likely to be slightly more secure though that all relative it might allow 20 minutes before getting sent off with some pop up telling you of an infection.

If you think you have it hard I had one Illiterate Computer User come and complain to me that the Work Popus where getting in the way of his [b]Porn Surfing![/b] As he owns the place I had to try to lock it down to an acceptable level of security and usability.

It's steady income going over there once a week and Cloning the Image from a removable HDD to the internal one in the NB.

But if you can put the browser in a Sand Pit and have fairly tight Firewall settings it seems to minimise the problems to some extent. :)

[b]Lots of Luck[/b] you're going to need it though I personally think that a [b]Live copy of Knoppix[/b] would in all likelihood be a better option.

My solution was to stuff all his data on an external USB Drive so he lost nothing when I perform the recovery from a Clone after wiping the HDD with a DoD Spec Wiping utility. Even then once he gets going it only takes about 20 minutes to wreck the entire thing but as it's hidden behind a router it's divorced from the network and relatively safe.

Col

by user.booted

...For everything. Well, not exactly, but I think it will probably be the best for him. Porn isn't exactly something that is ever really safe to surf for, but I guess if he has good enough protection, then it will be okay. =\

by techexec2

This is a good opportunity to talk about security, and have a little fun :-) :D :^0 ]:). All of this security advice is just as applicable to G-rated web browsing.

- Cruising porn sites is very much like walking alone at 3am down a dark alley in a bad part of town. You're just BEGGING for trouble.

- People running porn sites are notorious for trying to break into your computer (this is not from PERSONAL experience mind you...guys talk, you hear things :-) ). So, putting together a secure package :-) for your sticky keyboard user (eeeewwwww :0 ) is a good security exercise.

- Assume that every porn site is going to try to do something illegal with your friend's computer: Steal his identity, steal his money, steal other information, blackmail him, etc.

- Assume that no matter what you do, some porn sites will succeed in installing malware (viruses, worms, spyware, etc).

- Only allow your single hand typist :0 to browse porn from a virtual machine (VMWare or Virtual PC). When the virtual machine gets infected (and it will be), "power off" the virtual machine, restore the virtual disk from a backup copy (disk-to-disk, just a file of a few gigabytes) and start over. It takes just a few minutes and he will be back to taking care of business :^0 from exactly where he started. So, no malware removal by you ever again B-). You could even set up a BAT file for him that he can run for himself. Auto-restore and auto-recover is best for people doing auto-erotica :^0.

- The price is right! MS Virtual PC is now a free download (link below). I use this software (not for THIS though :-) ) daily and it works very well. You can run ANY guest X86-compatible operating system. I have run ALL versions of Windows including Vista and many flavors of Linux without any problems whatsoever. None.

- VM software enables you to configure the VM so that it records changes written to the virtual disk separate from the original virtual disk image. Then, when the virtual disk becomes infected with malware, you can reboot the VM and choose to start from the virtual disk [i]without[/i] the changes file. This is even better than the previous bullet, but requires your friend to understand this.

- Don't use IE. There are more people using IE and more exploits for IE. I expect that more porn sites will be using more IE exploits than for any other browser. Time is valuable to porn purveyors and criminals too. They will likely work to infect IE browsers first and most often.

- Use Firefox and use the NOSCRIPT extension. The NOSCRIPT extension enables you to allow/disallow Java, JavaScript, and Flash execution on a per-domain basis. You can even default to not allowing it, and conditionally allow it when you choose (he chooses) to with a single click (and a single hand :^0 ). Most browser exploits are related to these technologies. Restricting your friend to static HTML pictures is a lot safer than live Flash video. Note: Firefox does not run ActiveX so that won't be an issue. Admonish your friend to never install a Firefox extension on his own (therefore no mistakes).

- Ensure your friend NEVER puts any personal data on the porn-viewing virtual machine. No names, no credit card numbers.

- Ensure your friend never goes to NON-porn sites from the porn-viewing VM. That way, cookies installed by the other websites can never be compromised by the porn websites isolated in the VM.

- Likewise, ensure your friend does not use the porn-viewing VM to send e-mail from. No address books to exploit. The VM is for porn only.

- Configure the VM so that it is not able to "see" the host machine or any other machine on the LAN (if there are any). Prove this via ping. When the VM becomes compromised by malware, you don't want any malware to be able to reach out to 192.168.*.* addresses on the LAN and try to attack them.

- If you use VMWare or Virtual PC, he will be just as safe on his W2K system as on his WXP system. Without the VM, I would only allow him to "do it" :^0 on the WXP system running SP2 and all up-to-date patches. The VM approach is better for you (JD) because the currency of the patches is much less of an issue that way. You won't have to be installing patches on his system as often or much at all B-). Finally, the VM approach is better because you can set it up once and it will work on all physical machines he ever runs it on forever. Just copy the virtual disk file and boot from it. Pretty darn cool! B-).

- Hard is better than soft :^0 -- Use a hardware router to connect to the Internet. This isolates the PC from malware and other network-based attacks far better than just using a software firewall. With a hardware router, you will not even have to use a software firewall, but you can (belt and suspenders).

EPILOGUE

I see this as a light-hearted matter because I trust your judgement JD. You would never help someone dangerous or someone viewing child porn. So, here's to your friend safely and thoroughly enjoying his new system! :^0

REFERENCES

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 -- Download
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/downloads/sp1.mspx

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 System Requirements
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/evaluation/sysreqs.mspx

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 SP1
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D58729D-DFA8-40BF-AFAF-20BCB7F01CD1&displaylang=en

by it cowgirl

Use only a VMWare "image" while surfing. Boot to the virtual desktop to surf. When finished, reboot. Any crap you picked up is now gone with the virtual desktop!

Check out the VMWare site for software, directions, and premade virtual desktop.

by kiltie

1: ghost an image of a basic clean system
User loads that clean image prior to every porn surfing session.

2: Use a Linux LiveCD.

I used Puppy 1.08 to safely access the Internet, (NO, I did not visit porn sites), and I could get to my games room (online Backgammon) and chat with my friends using GAIM, surf any site from a saved bookmark file. Mozilla and/or Firefox are default browers, Opera is also available.

I used 256MB RAM on a Pentium II, WITH NO HARD DRIVES CONNECTED AT ALL, so there is no way to get infected on a stand alone system, the OS runs entirely in RAM and with the CD being a read only medium, I reckon it is totally safe.

Puppy is very small, the d/l is only around 50 to 60MB, it can also be installed to a 128MB thumb drive, so between that choice, or a mini CD (eg business card size), you can carry a whole OS around with you, in your pocket. It is a desktop distro, Windows users will feel quite at home with its full GUI. If the user wants, settings and preferences can be saved to a file on a hard drive, to be used next time, or simply deleted at the end of a session, Puppy doesn't care either way. The host OS is totally unaffected, the Linux OS doesn't even see it. There are other, equally good Desktop Linux distros, with very small footprints.

Did I mention that it is free too?

I would suggest method 2 for fullest security, no doubt there are other ways.....

EDIT: added clarification.

by kiltie

If the user wants to save things, such as xxx movie clips, then the LiveCd (I mentioned Puppy) can be run as a multisession with a CD RW or a DVD RW (giving over 4GB of room).
Puppy installed to a flash drive is optimised to hardly ever read/write from the drive (see below why)

or use as a normal Live CD, the OS stores its data in a few small files, which can be copied offline and/or deleted afterwards. Data can also be copied elswehere, at the end of the session, before rebooting, simply delete the files, they will be recreated afresh next time. Alternatively, the files, if copied offline, can be copied back before using the LiveCD again, and it will use what was left from the previous session.

The host OS isn't accessed or affected in any way at all, there is nothing for any malware to get a grip on.

by timbstoke

Get him a decent anti-virus and spyware scanner installed. As far as browser, I'd go with Firefox. Put him behind a router rather than a modem, and configure the router so that incoming packets are directed away from his PC - i.e. put his PC on 192.168.2.2, and direct all incoming connections to 192.168.2.255. This gives you a cheap-and-dirty hardware firewall, but get a software firewall too.

Partition the disk such that the system partition is expendible - tell him that anything he wants to keep needs to be saved to D:

Once you have a working system, get Ghost or similar, and image the system partition. Leave him with this CD and instructions on how to use it. Also teach him to use XP's System Restore.

That's the approach I've taken with my parents - although they're not porn browsers, they're not exactly savvy, and can be relied upon to click any "Install now" buttons that might appear. This combination means that they can recover from pretty much any situation without any help from me.

by nz_justice

you got a "home user". :D.

so when you test the solutions for this "user" you got a justifiable excuse for surfing porn.

nice :p

by Member 25348569

is a BBC Radio programme and one of its features is the funny newspaper cuttings that are read out at the end.

One of todays snippets of a divorce hearing was very relevant to this thread:

"When questioned, Mrs. X said that her suspicions that her husband was gay started when she discovered him downloading gay porn. When she asked him about the downloads, he replied, 'I'm downloading gay porn because it has fewer viruses than straight porn'"

There you go, point him at some gay sites.

:D

by tony hopkinson

Niot being able to have a uer account is a real pain, it puts a sever cripm on waht the badys guys acan do. IE is a nonststarter, it's a pipeline straight to your vulnerables.
A couple of things would be to password access into the firewall so he can't just click ok in his haste to get get to the promised land. S&Ds TeaTimer add on to watch the registry also.

based on my spelling I need to watch how much cider I'm supping !
A lot of education.

by birgir

Dear jdclyde,

This is apsalutely a Virtual Machine Job use MS free Virtual server and then when you have set the VM up using XP and what ever furn the free lokc down tool Shared computer toolkit 1.0 (free from MS) make peridodica backups (by copying the VM file and harddisk file)

Good luck you?ll need it

by absolutely

An external hard drive can cost as little as the cheapest version of VMWare, (http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/pricing.html), but this user's interests would obviously be better served by additional data storage capacity than by a license to use professional quality software. The technical level of the question jdclyde is asking "on this user's behalf" make clear that neither is any kind of expert.

by jdclyde

I never claimed to be a windows guy, and if I WAS an expert on it I wouldn't NEED to ask the questions.

Servers and networking, not desktops.

Know enough to make and keep a business machine stay up, but I have the ability at the firewall to block out a lot "for their own good". I do not have that kind of control of this system.

I have never had someone openly ask me to make them a porn machine before. From the tone, you ARE an expert on making porn machines?

by jaqui

often require javascript, so having it disabled isn't really an option.

I would recommend either Seamonkey or Firefox, with the browser configured to NOT allow automatic installation of software. Seamonkey might be better, since it doesn't have the number of extentions that Firefox has, and isn't as commonly used as Firefox.
Seamonkey has native pdf support, and works with Netscape plugins so it can be extended to use media, but isn't as much a target as it's better known, bloated relative, Firefox.

editing to add:

Thinking about it, any full distro, with autologin as user to a gui would avoid 99.995% of the problems.
[ tracking cookies being the only thing he would still get. ]

not any of the *buntu distros, since the flawed sudo security model means he would be able to use root priviledges easily.

by why me worry?

BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH

Happy now?

by jdclyde

I would be happier if you would have come to the understanding of why I was bothered instead of editing to just shut me up.

Oh well, I will take what I get.

Thanks.

by gralfus

That phrase can be taken more than one way, i.e. safe from prosecution or safe from malware and popups. Maecuff's husband apparently also interpreted it to mean safe from prosecution since he suggested Anonymizer.

by too old for it

Proxies/ spoofing IP's, / anonymous browsing / cleaning of tracks all might be good ideas to keep the malware, zombies & trojan droppers at bay.

I've always been a fan of hardware firewalls and proxies, even on garbage file servers.

My part-time job used to have a couple of middle-aged guys as clients who had a PC connected to a big screen TV in kind of a movie room and a penchant for gay porn ... after the first service call I took to bringing my own test movies.

by nz_justice

I would also recommend Konqueror but there doesn't appear to be a version for windows.
or maybe you could visit all the porn sites "this guy" is likley to visit and block which ones are bad and which ones install evilware on "the users" pc.

by hal 9000

But most end users only want to turn it on and go. Not many will be willing to load a VM system so that they can do whatever safely.

Or maybe it's just my customers who are like this they tell me what they want and I have to supply it no matter what. Better still they want me to go there and reload their systems on a regular basis because they don't want to do the work themselves. Far too many of them rely on what their uneducated mates tell them and then want the same thing. If it involves anything more than pushing a button to turn on they are not interested. :D

And reloading is what they have IT people that they pay so why should they bother with unnecessary things like doing it themselves after all they are busy people who have their own work to do. :p

Col

by heml0ck

their anitvirus is pretty good.... also does malware... the home edition is free, and is stoopidly easy to use...
I would use Firefox with the IE tabbed extension. That way, if needed you can open IE pages in the Firefox browser....
I've found that with the full suite of protective tools, IE is really bogged down... it works, but is slow.

Another tool to look at is called RestoreIt. It is a partition recovery tool that you can use to restore to a known good config,

by kshah

My Friend had a mere of a time removing this software from his machine a week ago. Would be intersting to know if any one has any experience using this software.

by heml0ck

If, however, the user insists on using a windows box, then the clone/restore solution is the least support intensive solution.
One of my brothers-in-law like to browse sites for "interesting" pictures, so I configured a machine using RestoreIt, and MS system restore, with FF and a HW router. He would happily surf away for a couple of months until the machine got too infected to browse anymore. I've shown him what to do (a couple of times) and I no longer get desperate calls from him, at least about that.

by jdclyde

And there are people that surf porn that might now WANT the world to know it.

Again, look at what the concerns were to avoid, and you will not find a single mention of hiding anything, covering tracks, or staying anonymous on my part.

Safe was [b]CLEARLY[/b] shown to keep the system from having to be reloaded on a regular basis.

Anyone that makes the automatic jump from porn to childporn is dealing with something in their own lives to have that conclusion. Not saying for himself, but possibly people around him? Either way, something outside this discussion brought that in, not anything ANYONE here has posted up to that point.

Go back and read how I specifically said the user would not be worried about vpn and sniffers. Just getting warz attacking his system.

So NO, it can NOT be taken from any post here, including Maes. Go look at ALL the things the package does and tell me that is sold only to people surfing illegal porn, and then shake your head to think for a second that if law enforcement asks for their records that they won't hand them over. The service only protects you from spammers and other such nasties tracking you back to bother you.

So I don't believe for a SECOND that Maes husband "apparently" was thinking of illegal porn.

What is wrong with you people?

by techexec2

You're absolutely right, JD. This was a security question -- securing the system from malware. And, this discussion about securing a system is relevant to ANY computer connected to the Internet. Securing against porn site is actually a good exercise because those sites are such a problem when it comes to malware. That is, if a system is secure for those sites, it's probably pretty secure otherwise.

This is a technically interesting topic that can be a little fun as well. "Why Me Worry" is completely over the line here (like he often is).

by jdclyde

As I did start this as an honest question to an honest problem, it is hard to not respond in kind when someone makes such an obviously stupid and ignorant attack.

I TRIED to keep my reply calm and measured, but let me tell you that I deleted it three times before I actually clicked on the submit, walking away between each.

Having ch!ldporn on the mind all the time WOULD be a good explaination to the "WHY" of him being worried. I would say he SHOULD be worried.

Thanks for the post TE2. I too have found this to be interesting except for this one twit.

by maecuff

My husband wants to stay anonymous because he is a FREAK when it comes to privacy. For himself and his family.

It's ridiculous to come to that sort of conclusion. And obvious that some people spend way to much time thinking about kiddie porn.

by jdclyde

That is a much more generous word than I am willing to use for someone making such a STUPID statement, based on the information that was available at the time of the STUPID statement.

I have other words that describe the situation better, but few that would get by the filters.

To follow his "logic", anyone that uses that or any other product like that is only interested in ch1ldporn? Hasn't the a$$clown ever heard of "Identity theft" for starters?

X-(

by hal 9000

Every time a Social Diseases/Worker involved in the Child Welfare Industry get involved they just seem to think that these people are hiding under every rock and behind every Electric Light pole. The fact that any legal actions don't bear out their beliefs mean absolutely nothing other than all these nasty people have not as yet been caught so these Social Diseases have to work that much harder and break the Laws that they are supposed to uphold to catch the Perps. :D

It's a mind set that only comes with a special breed of [b]ID10T![/b] :^0

Col

by techexec2

JD, I think isolation and easy restore (or NO restore) is best here. If you choose one of these approaches (below), you won't have to deal with anti-virus, anti-spyware, malware wipes, or system rebuilds.

LINUX BOOT FROM CD

There are Linux distributions with recent Firefox already installed that boot directly from a CD very quickly. You just download the ISO file and burn it to a CD. During boot, a small "HDD" in RAM is created. This is the best of all. No malware wipes or system restores ever. I can provide you a link if you're interested.

VM APPROACH

If your user is unwilling to reboot to Linux, the VM approach is also very good. Since that system would be used only for porn viewing, it CAN run as user. If it gets infected, just copy the virtual HDD file from the backup you made elsewhere on the host system and reboot the VM. This process would be very easy to implement so your user could do this all by himself without your assistance. Microsoft's Virtual PC software is now free. I use it myself.

COMBO APPROACH

You could easily combine the above two approaches. That is, boot the VM from the Linux CD. All the same benefits of the Linux boot CD approach without even having to shutdown the main Windows system. You could even boot the VM from the ISO file on disk (no physical CD at all).

EPILOGUE

I'm interested to know what you end up choosing and how well it works for you...just from a technical and security point of view. :-)

by nz_justice

needs to be the ability to store porn.

Then I spose If JD installs a DVD rewritable and configrues the PC\Browser to Save porn straight to a Rewritable DVD, any evilware dowloaded known or unknown will reside on the rewritable DVD, then you just have to clean the evilware of the DVD.

Or as someone has metioned an external HDD or partion can also think about using ghost.

by techexec2

Hey dude! What are you saying here? Just rhetorical?

"Why Me Worry" is the alias of the guy who started this (objectionable) section of the thread.

"What, Me Worry" is the Alfred E. Newman catch phrase.

Later...

by heml0ck

and "whoops" you are absolutley right .... missed the quote "by that much!" Doh!

by charliespencer

Get him a newsgroup reader instead of putzing with the web. Set it to exclude .exe, .msi, .bat, etc. Point him to alt.binaries.whatever.floats.his.boat and let him go.

by rager

There are still probably a few "clean" pr0n sites or at least clearinghouse sites like TheHun that are going to be relatively troublefree, but I wouldn't look for much on the web.

by jdclyde

would be for him to cancel his internet account and spend that money at 7eleven! ;\

[i]
(7eleven is a 24 hour party story known for selling lots of nudie mags)

by maecuff

exactly.

My husband is very paranoid when it comes to identity theft. Or really, safety in general. God forbid I forget to lock the car up at night. Or even worse, one of the older kids should come home late and forget to lock the front door. That action will result in a 3-5 minute yell fest. :)

by jamesrl

About 5 years ago I was travelling, and checked into a hotel after a 5 hour drive.

The hotel tried using my corporate American Express Card, and there was a flash message to have them call Amex. They called, spoke to the operator and had them hand the phone to me.

My credit card had been used by me to pay for my internet access (corporate perk). My ISP had been hacked, and the credit card files copied.

Amex by the way was very professional and they shipped me a new card overnight. Needless to say, I made other arrangements for paying my ISP.

I have heard through my reading of security newsletters about porn sites that ask you for a credit card for age validation, but then tack on a monthly charge whether you use it or not.

Porn sites are notorious for tracking cookies, generating spam, spyware and more.

James

by mickster269

jd? is that a picture of a cat in your avatar?

Are you sure you aren't talking about "kitty" porn?

I imagine you might want to not only bring your own mouse and keyboard, but you might want to bring along your own chair- or at least your own seat cover.

by jdclyde

no, he said what I thought he said.... :0

Yes, a kitty. As part of the "roast JD", I figured what better than a cat "playing dead" for an avitar? ;\

by why me worry?

I'm sure the topic of child porn has been addressed here on TR. I recall reading a thread about a boss who asked one of his techs to clean his PC of "junk" and make it work better. Anyhow, what the PC tech found on his boss's PC was very disturbing, if not illegal. The boss had kiddie porn bookmarks and all sorts of cookies pointing to offshore kiddie porn sites. The red flag went up when someone who is adult wants to erase traces of surfing porn sites, because as an adult, why should one be ashamed of looking at adult material? On the other hand, if it is illegal child porn or the like, then of course the offender would want to ensure that he/she cannot be prosecuted by removing all traces of such activity from the PC.

by maecuff

to say that MANY adults wouldn't be forthcoming about their 'porn viewing' habits. And I'm talking about straight forward, adult porn.

And as James pointed out, remaining anonymous would cut down on the spam and spyware that goes along with surfing MANY different sites, not just porn.

by jamesrl

If, as in the example, one was using a corporate computer to access porn, even if it was not on the corporate network at the time, is still against many corporate policies and could get you fired. I have heard of disciplinary actions in such cases at previous employers.

James

by techexec2

JD already explained where your point is completely lost (and there is no reason to explain your "reasoning" by the way...it's plainly obvious). There is nothing in this thread about destroying evidence or hiding anonymously on the Internet. It's all about protection from malware and identity theft that comes FROM the porn websites.

Kiddie porn and child abuse are very offensive to EVERYONE, even to criminals. It should be more than obvious to you that it is very offensive for you to make a direct accusation/speculation as you did. After all, this is a forum of tech professionals, not sex criminals.

Why not retract your post and drop this? It's the right thing to do.

edit: spelling and grammar

by hal 9000

To have your system clogged up and slowed down with all the junk that is pushed out by these [b]Adult Sites?[/b]

I very much doubt it and am concerned by your own twisted little mind to jump to this conclusion on what is obviously a [b]Security Related[/b] discussion only. The fact that you are trying to justify your stance only makes matters worse and makes you look even more stupid than you actually are.

I'll edit in a URL to another discussion currently running on TR about Identity Theft and see if you still have the same concerns. :D

http://tinyurl.com/s7hlu

Now this is purely a Security Issue that needs to be addressed by the IT community at every level for the Companies & Personal Safety and there can be no suggestion that any of this is related to Child Porn unless you wish to continue to carry on and defame other members of the TR Site which should lead to a response from TR about your actions.

Col
[i]Edited to add link and description[/i]

by jdclyde

and it was not based on ANY facts to begin with.

[i]"I suspect he is into child pornography"[/i]
That is a DIRECT accusation and is about as insulting as you can get. The FACT that you have no facts to back this insult up with only adds insult to injury.

I can't think of anyone who would leave open evidence of porn surfing. What if you have family over? Friends? This isn't something the average SANE person will want to advertise to everyone.

Discression is the word. Some people still have some.

Again, I am asking you to fully retract your statement as it has no place here.

by local support

Give him a COMPAQ Deskpro and Win98 SE. Drivers are available. Give him the bugfixes from M$ on a CD. You can download them as a network administrator.
Also F-Secure internet security.

If he makes another F-U , just leave him bee.

\Local support

by nicknielsen

7-11 doesn't sell that kind of stuff HERE! This is the Bible Belt.

We have 24-hour adult party stores. :^0

by nicknielsen

The porn site will ask you to input your credit card number for use as "age verification." (How a credit card can verify your age, I don't yet know. Many teenagers have parent-backed credit cards.) The confirmation page then appears with the gotcha that unless you cancel using the member code below within X days, you will be charged some exorbitant amount monthly (not usually less than $40). Almost immediately after the page displays, it is replaced by a generic welcome screen. :0

The confirmation code is also sent to you in an email which, for most of us, ends up in the junk mailbox and is promptly deleted. Without this code, stopping any charges requires you to access a site that will not work at all unless you use IE with ActiveX, Flash, and full scripting support enabled. This is where I went to my friend's shop and used his sandboxed machine.

Yeah, I'll admit it. This is from personal experience. Hey, it was one of my favorite classic porn flicks and the price was right, too. B-)

by nz_justice

Just make his admin account a porn surfing non-admin account, and he won't know the diffrence, and when he can't install stuff or gets the messeages he can't install stuff tell him he got evilware of a porn site, then when you goto fix all you do to install the apps he wants is the run as command with the secret admin acccount you created for clean up and install his apps, and you can keep the beers, tinnies or whatever rolling and keep good relations.

Aside from ignoring the speling mistakes callculate in your head where commas should be or where they can be placed to make the sentences I have typed make sence, might take a few goes. ;)

by tlcomp

Un-freaking-believable! I am amazed at this discussion. I absolutely cannot believe it!

If you have a real consulting business that you want to keep, you need to extricate yourself from this client immediately. No ifs, ands, or buts. No speculation about whether or not he's into whatever level of porn. Get out if you value your reputation.

I have to reiterate and underscore what has already been said... If any child porn is ever found on his PC, even if it got there accidentally, and you did not report it to the authorities, then you become an accomplice to the crime, and you will have to prove your innocence or you could get sent off to the big house, big time.

by kiltie

It isn't about the morals of porn, the rights and wrongs, it's all about security (see the tags and earlier posts)

and a very interesting technical discussion it is proving to be, with most proposed solutions falling into the categories of

1) Ghosting
2) LiveCDs
3) a VM environment

The first two I originally suggested, all three have merits, and some other good alternatives are cropping up.

Great thread, good discussions, from a technical point of view, although I wish some folk would read the rest before posting.

by jdclyde

that you are so damn lazy that you didn't even read enough of the discussion the know what your even talking about.

A customer comes to your shop with a computer full of malware, do you refuse to take the job to clean it up if it was caused by porn surfing?

Go out and buy yourself a clue.

For someone that places value on reputations, you have just given yourself a reputation for having no eye for detail, poor comprehension skills, and commenting on topics you refused to educate yourself on. Yes, it reflects very poorly on you.

And the bad thing is, in other posts you actually seemed competent. What happened? Having a bad day and got lazy?

by why me worry?

Thank you for seeing my side of this issue, because as an independent contractor, I would balk at such a request and get very suspicious if one of my clients ever asked me to do something like this.

by jdclyde

his statement was dumber than yours was because he seemed to have read even less of the discussion before making that leap than you did.

I still stand by my statement that there was nothing in ANY of my posts to indicate or even HINT at anything illegal. That is where I take direct offense as there was never a basis for you to start thinking about little kids other than having something going on in your own life that equates porn to kids. Glad I don't live in your world.

A home user, using his personal computer. We are not talking a professional client here, just someone I know as I CLEARLY stated. Getting paid in beer, when I work on his systems.

And I have directly said as much to this guy for his uninformed and ignorant comments.

by tlcomp

But apparently I should clarify a bit.

If you want to build a professional IT career, and you help someone (friend, co-worker, neighbor or client) create an environment that could land you on the wrong side of the law, then you need to think a little deeper about your actions.

Yes, I realize that there is a technical aspect to this discussion, but I can't believe that people are actually offering suggestions to help someone surf for porn.

My objections are based purely on the legal implications of possibly being entangled in a mess that could bring down your own career. For instance, your "friend" gets caught and tells the authorities that you advised him on how surf the porn sites. Some friend.

The way I have handled this situation is to explain politely that as a professional with my own consulting business, I cannot comment on how to safely surf porn sites. Then I say that if in working on someone's computer I come across child porn on the hard drive, then I am bound by law to immediately call the police; if I don't make the call, then I become implicated in the crime. That person has not called me to work on their PC since then (although he did buy a new PC from me because the old one was so messed up it wouldn't run anymore.)

by jdclyde

And someone that can't even read the original post is definately lazy. I can understand not reading every post when you show up late for the party, but to base a post on looking at titles and what that a$$clown earlier was saying about k1ddyporn, is just stupid and reflects poorly on the professional image he claims he thinks we should maintain.

Nice eye for detail. Glad he doesn't work with me.

by nicknielsen

...his professional image equates this consultant's attitude (http://tinyurl.com/hsoa8) and his eye for detail appears limited as well.

He may be one of those "Document it? Why do you think they call it code" people. After delivery, the only detail you can see is de tail walking out the door. ;\

by jdclyde

does not equate to illegal.

porn should not equate to kids, but it seems to in "why me worry"'s mind. That is something for him to really worry about.

Even your clients alternate taste in entertainment does not bring in concerns of illegal behavior and child abusers.

by tig2

You are the last person I would ever think of facilitating illegal behaviour. Not the JD I know.

So what have you decided is an optimal solution for this guy? Cr@pware can come from anywhere and particularly for people interested in gaming codes, the solution you implement could be a benefit. I am interested in hearing how you quarantine your client's pc and the effectiveness of the solution- up time, needing to reinstall, etc.

by jdclyde

one, I have never worked with ghost or disk imaging. It is probably a good time to learn.

two, been wanting to learn feather linux anyways. Can load and run off a flash drive, a CD, or a hard drive. That would be probably the best, to run off a CD. First being linux and second being on a "read only" media would make it pretty bullet proof. The only weakness would be where he would save his collectables. would look into clamAV to scan the drive before he boots back to his windows box. Would be nice to make that part of the live cd.

When I get something going, I will start a new discussion about what I did and how I did it.

by tig2

Share how that goes. I am thinking of going Linux at home but want to get the test cycles first before I toast my home/business machine.

Zone Free should insure that he doesn't download a nasty but that is also dependant on him to help control.

I know that whatever you implement can be tested when the boys are diving for gaming information. The cr@pware on those sites is at least the equal to anything that this guy finds.

Ghost is a NICE toy. Definitely take time to learn it- especially for complex installs. I have saved my tail because I had a ghost available.

Still very interested in what you discover. I believe that we are coming to the days of a quarentined box- because virtually every site you visit will have some garbage attached.

by hal 9000

To a Live Linux you could always save his treats to a USB Thumb Drive and then once they are cleaned transfer them across to a Windows Directory when he's running Windows.

Col

by jneilson

You could make millions off of it. The internet porn industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, so there's lots to be made if you can stomach it.

by jdclyde

as a lot of the porn money on the internet is FROM the exploits on the porn pages, I would think many would not be too hip on this.

Also, the same features that would protect you from the porn exploits are the same that would keep anyones system safe. As I mentioned to Bliss, even going to the game cheat web sites can do you in. People that download cracks for games don't realize many of them have trojans in them.

I have a long way to go though, as security is a fairly new hat for me. But it is fun and rarely boring.

by techexec2

Just in case you have not tried this...

You really don't have to make a "jump" to try out a new operating system. You can do it without harming your existing operating system and go back at any time.

I use "drive drawers" (1) and Virtual PC (2) in order to boot to alternate operating systems for testing purposes. The "drive drawers" approach works with almost (3) any PC that has a 5.25" drive bay available. This is also very handy when you need to replace a bad drive as you don't have to crack open the case.

Virtual PC is a free download.

REFERENCES

(1) Drive drawer
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=269830

(2) Microsoft Virtual PC
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/downloads/sp1.mspx

FOOTNOTE

(3) I say "almost" because some very old BIOSes don't automatically recognize drive geometry changes when you switch drives. But, I haven't seen that problem for several years now (all new PCs do it fine). And, this problem is not a big one anyway. All you had to do is manually change the BIOS settings. I doubt you would have to do this with any PC purchased in the last 3-4 years.

edit: "this problem is [b]not[/b] a big one anyway"

by haylocks

using Xoftspy from paretologic. Overnight scans make it painless. I started using this after I discovered key loggers coming down with download managers.

Best regards
Richard

by ihulland

I had this request and as he was pleased, he was a satisfied customer and passed the word -- now have 5 users all with 2GB+ RAM using a RAM drive for all surfing. Set at each re-boot to save certain things for next time ( His Fav's etc)but basically everything gets cleaned out at every re-boot.Also for mid-session wipes, I installed Crap Cleaner to run from hot kery silently and config. to manually add all folders that contain cookies, temps etc etc . So he runs this every 30 mins or so from hot key. Seems to work very best with NetCaptor sitting on top of IE6 with EVERYTHING let in, then EVERYTHING dumped regularly.
My other thought is Black Ice set to re-load an image at every re-boot of PC. My idea was to renew everything pref. on daily basis. Just a few cents worth.