User wants porn

Locked

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.)

Topic

Get Zone. Do it NOW

In reply to User wants porn

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

Install that puppy and then go to http://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!

So..I’m reading these posts

In reply to Get Zone. Do it NOW

to my husband. He suggests that in addition to zone, to look into this:

http://anonymizer.com/consumer/products/total_net_shield/

lol, news groups

In reply to So..I’m reading these posts

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

roflmao

I cant beleive I answered this

Dan

Come to think about it

In reply to lol, news groups

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?)

Cheggit.net

In reply to Come to think about it

So… “this guy I know” runs cheggit.net, it’s a bit torrent site, and you can bet your sweet patuttie that if you’re spreading the downloading and sharing of these files around to multiple users, the users are pretty quick to point out which ones are corrupt and will ban repeat offenders. It’s a whole geek-porn community. They’ve all “got each other’s back” so to speak. Hairy backs and all even… ewwww

Don’t think net shield would help

In reply to So..I’m reading these posts

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?

after a closer look

In reply to Don’t think net shield would help

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!

No problem

In reply to after a closer look

I knew my husband’s obessive need for complete and total privacy would come in handy one day. 🙂

Send it to me rather

In reply to after a closer look

any porn pics you may have… at collspam@googlemail.com, but no spam please 😉

check out avast

In reply to Don’t think net shield would help

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,

Avast !! Intersting

In reply to check out avast

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.

I’ve never had any

In reply to Avast !! Intersting

problems removing avast… symantec? oh yeah… Macafee, sometimes

Problems removing an AV? Nope.

In reply to I’ve never had any

I never used Avast on my machine, but I also never had any problems removing it from other people’s PCs. Never had a problem removing Symantec (Norton) Antivirus from my machine either (as I sometimes had to do in order to properly re-install it), although getting rid of all the little things it stuffs into the Registry is a bit tedious. But nothing that a little nifty search-and-replace couldn’t handle. No problems removing McAfee from any machine, either.

I guess the best way is to make a nice clean Ghost image of your hard disk before you install any such AV program, then when you want to remove it, just restore the image. Or, better yet, do a backup of the Registry before an AV install. The only downside of that is, you also lose any settings for any programs you installed AFTER the AV was installed.

Problem with Mcrappy the other day

In reply to I’ve never had any

My buds parents (not the users refered to in this discussion) just got a new HP system. It came with the macafee security center trial. Went to uninstall. Can’t uninstall because it is running. look at the system, no where to turn it off. (nice).

msconfig and disable all of it, and reboot.
all came back. (wtf?)

safemode, uninstall and it is finally gone.

I can’t believe they would do this to home users with a 30 trial version of something.

Replaced with AVG and zonealarm.

Because it is my best buds parents, and they never take advantage of my assistance, they knew I would not accept any money from them so they bought me two cases of beer. Now what am I going to do with two cases of beer? 😀

(party at jd’s place!)

Avast – No problems

In reply to Avast !! Intersting

I’ve been using Avast on 4 home computers (XP Home and Win2K) and my daughters XP Pro Laptop in her university dorm room.

I don’t think I’ve ever uninstalled it so I can’t speak into that, but I’ve never had a minutes trouble and have never become infected with anything.

All of these machines also use Windows Defender so that might be helping out with spyware / malware. None of these machines are running an aftermarket firewall or anything. Public interfaces are firewalled with the regular Windows firewall.

Add PG2 as Well

In reply to Avast – No problems

Peer Guardian 2 from Phoenix Labs, with Avast, Firefox and Windows Firewall works great. Barely a tracking cookie

Deep Freeze

In reply to Don’t think net shield would help

Deep Freeze is a program that alot of schools use to
keep students from making any changes. So after a reboot the old image before daily use is loaded.

http://www.faronics.com/index.asp

Second Deep Freeze

In reply to Deep Freeze

I first learned of Deep Freeze when I was in college. I work for a Public Housing Autority and we have student labs for less fortunate kids to use. These machines were being re-ghosted WEEKLY because of malware and viruses. I convinced them to give me the money to purchase 25 copies of Deep Freeze for these machines, and they stay in top shape, every day, for over a year now. The only concern with this being a home computer is that you can’t make ANY changes to the system without ‘thawing’ it and a reboot. You can create a ‘thawed’ space for file storage.. but any changes you make… anything from adding a favorite to saving a document(not in thaw space) to completely and forcefully deleting the contents of the C:\WINDOWS folder is completely restored after a simple reboot.

My lab computers don’t run an antivirus or anything anymore. They are set to shut down every evening at 9pm, or after 1 hour of non-use. This is all configurable in the Deep Freeze Administration console. You can even have it auto thaw, get Windows updates, Freeze, and reboot, all on it’s own.

Great for absolute mitigation of problems, if you can deal with the hassle of not being able to make any changes to your machine without jumping through a few loops.

What about

In reply to Second Deep Freeze

If you run DeepFreeze on the desktop and have an external hard drive for files and folder? Or would that defeat the purpose, and allow the malware to infect the external? –Sorry for the silliness of the question–I’m still learning when it comes to setting up safe hardware!

VMWARE is free

In reply to What about

Hey,

Why not do a combonation of things and install VMWARE onto his workstation, then creating a virtual image of XP or Win 2k. Once its all patched up install deep freeze and the rest of your virus protectors, create a backup copy of the virtual workstation and turn off login to the virutal machine. this way if anything happens to his virutal pc it will not affect his primary image and deep freeze will not lock down his PC to much.

Not sure if this the best method but, its another idea…

Shadow

In reply to Don’t think net shield would help

on one hand, using shadow image would be useful for all of us against all threats, on the other hand, it is just more administrative overhead.
Still, We all take our chances, Some more than others, Some of us get what we deserve!! But we are not ask to be anothers conscience, just our own. Too each there own!

And for free porn

In reply to So..I’m reading these posts

Tanyasmegasite is pretty good….I hear…..from some people…so they say…

Bootable CD OS

In reply to Get Zone. Do it NOW

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.

That is a good answer

In reply to Bootable CD OS

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

No Linux

In reply to Bootable CD OS

Although live OS cd would be ideal, I think in the original post he made it clear that the client was not ready for Linux.

All that needs to be done is prepare a BartPE boot disk minimised & so configured that run from ram, uses local disk partition, auto runs the browser & probably logs into the favourite site.

Other option would be to create a dual boot system with minimum installation – some thing like eXperience. You only need to ensure that all other partitions are hidden & you have a gdost image for restore. This way his settings will be saved & there will not be any issue of cleaning up the disk. Just restore the ghost image.

If you use Firefox with MozBack utility you will not have any problems in restoring the login settings/passwords either.

I disagree

In reply to No Linux

“Although live OS cd would be ideal, I think in the original post he made it clear that the client was not ready for Linux”

In fact he said “I tried talking him into a linux distro, but he was not interested.”

A Linux LiveCD is not the same thing as a Linux distro. No need to do anything “Linux” at all, just boot from CD to RAM, straight to a desktop, looking very similar to a Windows Desktop, fire up a browser, Firefox, for example, and surf away!

One of the Puppy Live CD versions, looks almost exactly like XP, even has the Bliss wallpaper!!

Worth a try imho, demo one for him JD?

Hey Kiltie

In reply to I disagree

How is Puppy Live different from Linux Live? Or is it different?

The reason I ask is that I want to move off MS and into a Linux wourld but want to test before I toast the HDD on my current machine. Looking for a Linux that I can “fly before I buy” so to speak. I also want to be fairly comfy with it before I am committed to it. And I have software that I will need to test.

I aplolgise if I sound ignorant- haven’t worked with any of the ‘nix distros for awhile and while I think it is the right direction, I want to have some hands on with the solution first.

Thanks in advance!

well now….

In reply to Hey Kiltie

There is a lot of info Tig, maybe a few links will help you?

http://www.puppylinux.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_Linux

http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT6545156120.html

http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/7052

Read a few of those to get an idea, follow up on links if you wish, if you are like me at all, you will spend days happily tracking all the info down.

I am currently in the process of evaluation a few dozen Linux LiveCDs, so far Puppy has come out on top, with Knoppix 2nd, and others in my shortlist are Ubuntu, Debian, Feather, PCLinuxOS, Slax, WinLinux and Dam Small Linux (DSL).

One final Link for you is FrozenTechs LiveCd List

http://tinyurl.com/jhp9y

I am now testing about a dozen of the various Puppy flavours/variants, one day soon I hope to post an article about Linux LiveCDs.

(but TRs link on articles is dead and they are not answering mail – I got an automated response to one query, saying to expect a response in 24 hours – that was over 10 days ago)

Thanks Kiltie!

In reply to well now….

You are absolutely right- I like tracking down good information. Just got a high level overview. Puppy looks to be a good solution- appears to have the stuff I want to use available.

Thanks for all the information and great links! I appreciate them!

Live with a difference

In reply to Hey Kiltie

It is a Lie Linux distribution. ISO is just under 65 mb. It keeps the session open when you write the iso to cd. The cd need not be an RW.

What ever work you do, download files,install software or change settings get saved on to the same cd when you finish. Of course you have to boot from a cd-r or dvd-r drive ro save the session. So when you boot the next time everything is exactly the way you when left ended the previous session. No other live version of Linux permits that. When you reach a state when there is no more room to write your additions / changes to the CD it will prompt you to insert a fresh blank CD & write the OS plus the latest info to it. You simply put away the filled up CD for posterity. You can always revert to any earier version as you please.

I personally use a 200 mb rw media which I carry around in my pocket. Works like a charm.

multisession

In reply to Live with a difference

You are describing the multisession distro of Puppy, I think.
There are many, many flavours, each with bits of what people might want, some come with a choice of browsers, some are targetted for graphics, some for simplicity (add your own afterwards)

My current favourite is Puppy-Optimised.iso (source for d/l in link I gave above). It has the best “look alike” for Windows XP and even the menus are almost English, instead of the seemingly random latters used for program names often found in Linux (a big bone of contention for me)

However, do not be put off by the “verbose” style of booting the OS, it looks ugly – as if thousands of error messages are being generated (YUK).
Even if there are problems, and it drops to the command line, persevere and start up a GUI with:

XWIN

you might like it ** wink **

Note: All these variations, or flavours as they like to call them, are devised by people like you and me, it is the “raison d’etre” behind open source software.

Don’t like what you see?
Simple, take the source (readily available) of something very similar to what you want, remove the bits you don’t want, add the bits you do, and burn a new CD.

It is called “Re-Mastering” and is a common thing to do.

I want to do just that, to create a simple, basic setup, where you are not swamped by all the techno mumbo jumbo, simple surfing, be it for whatever purpose you want – porn in the example title of this thread, but could be anything.

The WHOLE POINT is that this is all invoked from a read only medium, doesn’t touch a host OS at all, IF any data needs to be saved, there is a small file (256MB or larger if you prefer) to keep user preferences from session to session, which also acts as the virtual HD in which the OS operates, along with volatile RAM and read only CDs. Any larger stuff can be burned to CD, Flash Drive, or to a spare secondary HD or partition for later processing, or copied across a network.

Puppy Linux Live CD, and others, have easy scripts that take all the programming chores out of doing such things.

It’s a breeze,
ideal for none technical user and the required security implications of this thread.

Live OS does not mean Linux (Windows PE)

In reply to I disagree

You could create a very usable and refreshable Windows XP desktop using Windows PE and Bart PE. This is not Linux, and the OS is read only. He will still have access to the file system on his hard drive, and best yet; if you use the “Ultimate Boot CD for Windows” as a guide you build in anti-virus and anti-malware that can scan and clean his system offline.

++SiteAdvisor plugin

In reply to Get Zone. Do it NOW

Right on TiggerTwo!! May I add to install McAfee’s SiteAdvisor plugin… great help if you really want to know how safe is the site you’re visiting…

Get Zone. Do it NOW

In reply to Get Zone. Do it NOW

I agree with TiggerTwo. I mean if your looking for something that is easy for your client to use and understand.

That is part of it……

In reply to Get Zone. Do it NOW

In addition to using ZoneAlarm, (NEVER, NEVER, NEVER! go on the Internet without a firewall!) download and install Netscape browser 8,1.2, avast avp, ccleaner, and Adaware which are all free.

The global security settings for Netscape work great. They include site controls, ID theft protection, automatic browser updates. site blacklist updates, malware/spyware protection, a privacy section where including an option to clear ALL tracks upon closing the browser (cache, cookies, forms, etc.) Although IE 7, Firefox, and Opera offer similar features, they cannot compare. If you want to save the bookmarks, export them to a floppy, different drive or flash module.

Avast offers a few options as standard most avps do not duch as actual Internet protection. Of course it offers automatic updates of the avp signatures and program itself.

After surfing the net, open Internet Options (place a shortcut on the desktop) and clear all cache, history, etc. Porn sites are notorious for placing cookies and OTHER items elsewhere in the directory.

Open Java (create a shortcut) and delete files.

Open ccleaner, analyze windows, then run cleaner. Do the same with applications.

Finally, run Adaware.

It seems like a lot of trouble but its really not. You need protection and the ability to keep your computer clean. After the above proceedure is performed a few times the act will become second nature. I have been performing and the same procedure for years.

One last note, go to HotPOP and obtain a free e-mail address and set the spam controls. Then direct all the mail being sent to that address to an e-mail account such as gmail, gwab mail, or Yahoo which all have avp and spam/junkmail settings. Then your incoming mail is scanned twice by different programs.

Happy surfing and enjoy the sites. 🙂

That is part of it……

In reply to Get Zone. Do it NOW

In addition to using ZoneAlarm, (NEVER, NEVER, NEVER! go on the Internet without a firewall!) download and install Netscape browser 8,1.2, avast avp, ccleaner, and Adaware which are all free.

The global security settings for Netscape work great. They include site controls, ID theft protection, automatic browser updates. site blacklist updates, malware/spyware protection, a privacy section where including an option to clear ALL tracks upon closing the browser (cache, cookies, forms, etc.) Although IE 7, Firefox, and Opera offer similar features, they cannot compare. If you want to save the bookmarks, export them to a floppy, different drive or flash module.

Avast offers a few options as standard most avps do not duch as actual Internet protection. Of course it offers automatic updates of the avp signatures and program itself.

After surfing the net, open Internet Options (place a shortcut on the desktop) and clear all cache, history, etc. Porn sites are notorious for placing cookies and OTHER items elsewhere in the directory.

Open Java (create a shortcut) and delete files.

Open ccleaner, analyze windows, then run cleaner. Do the same with applications.

Finally, run Adaware.

It seems like a lot of trouble but its really not. You need protection and the ability to keep your computer clean. After the above proceedure is performed a few times the act will become second nature. I have been performing and the same procedure for years.

One last note, go to HotPOP and obtain a free e-mail address and set the spam controls. Then direct all the mail being sent to that address to an e-mail account such as gmail, gwab mail, or Yahoo which all have avp and spam/junkmail settings. Then your incoming mail is scanned twice by different programs.

Happy surfing and enjoy the sites. 🙂

Another can of WORMS(no typo)

In reply to User wants porn

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

Worms are good!

In reply to Another can of WORMS(no typo)

if your fishing, that is. 😀

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.

Just Make Sure to inform him

In reply to Worms are good!

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

So Many Suggestions, Here’s One More

In reply to Worms are good!

Maybe you should take a harder look at who your friends are. I had a customer who had a “fetish” for porn. Every Week it was the same ‘ol thing’, as all the work was onsite, I went there weekly. Once as I was walking in, a hooker was walking out. I decided immediatly that I wanted nothing to do with him anymore. Problem Solved

Unlike you

In reply to So Many Suggestions, Here’s One More

I wouldn’t even recognise a hooker when I saw one. 😀 I have been to the casino “The Soaring Eagle” in Mount Pleasent several times. Had a discussion with people that live in the area and they were complaining about the hookers all over the place. I like to think I am not a backwoods hick, but I had never noticed a single one! :0

As for your opinion of people so you can place judgement on them, I am looking at this as a learning experience on how to secure a workstation. Being a network guy, a lot of this is new, and most “security” for desktop classes only discuss AD, and not stand alone workstations.

The reason I am in TR in the first place is because I DO always get to learn something new.

JD this may prove useful

In reply to Unlike you

I haven’t tried it specifically to prevent infection from Porn Sites but it’s great for the Sales Staff who are on the road and some have gone as many as 29 days without updating and reminded infection free. Zondex available from here

http://www.apro.com.au/guard.htm

Know the Sales People it’s anyone’s guess what they get up to when on the road away from home and as their NB’s stay free of problems I swear by this product. While I wouldn’t totally rely on it for a total security blanket it works a treat for the people who’s NB’s that I have it on here.

I hope that is of some use

Col

Look into Sandboxie

In reply to User wants porn

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

Wow…just wow…

In reply to User wants porn

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.

I am trying to talk him into that

In reply to Wow…just wow…

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.

JD if they are only surfing Porn Sites

In reply to I am trying to talk him into that

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

ROFLMAO

In reply to I am trying to talk him into that

“Tell me what your end result is and I will find a way for you to get there!” We all know what his end result is!

“I am so tired of wipe and loads!” Time for a disposable keyboard cover, ‘Nuff said.

Tell him to rent or buy some good smutt from the local adult store on dvd. It’s cheaper than subscribing to the porn sites ;-(not that I would know ;-)and he won’t have to worry about the internet going “down”.

Holy Crap! How long is this thread?

In reply to Wow…just wow…

Ha! I see one of the most replied to threads involoves pr0n. Isn’t this what the internet was invented for?

My two bits:
1. Try sandboxie,
2. Bootable OS CD (I know he don’t do Linux, but there are sooooo many distros out there that there is bound to be something he will be able to use)

Actually I don’t see that Porn has anything

In reply to Holy Crap! How long is this thread?

At all to do with this thread. It’s more along the lines of [b]Advanced Security[/b] that should be implemented on all [b]Windows Workstations.[/b]

The fact that in this case the Tech involved is attempting to make a Windows Box usable to surf Porn sites is beside the point. It could just as easily be Game Cracks, Music Downloads or anything else that falls into the category of [b]Unsafe Web Surfing.[/b]

There is a very good reason why this thread has been in the [b]Hot Discussions[/b] for well over a week now and that’s because there is so much involved in securing a Windows Box and just how many people do it differently with the same [b]Hoped For Outcome.[/b] Some get what they want and others don’t but no matter what it’s still a [b]Basic Security Issue[/b] and nothing more.

Col

It was all part of JDs plan

In reply to Holy Crap! How long is this thread?

Call the thread “Securing a Windows box” and only a few geeks might have looked at it.

BUT…. throw in a word like “porn” in the title, it virtually guarantees that everyone will look….

** wink **

You think that is something?

In reply to It was all part of JDs plan

wait for my new discussion I will be starting on Monday….. ]:)

Opera is best…

In reply to User wants porn

…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. =\

This is a good opportunity to talk about security…

In reply to User wants porn

This is a good opportunity to talk about security, and have a little fun 🙂 😀 :^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

More double entendres per square inch…

In reply to This is a good opportunity to talk about security…

…than any other TR post in history 🙂

PLUS, it has a whole boatload of good advice for people who want to surf, single-handedly or not 🙂

Now he’s got ME “doing it” — er, I mean, doing it! The double entendres, people, the double entendres! 🙂

Exactly right!

In reply to More double entendres per square inch…

Exactly right!

Glad you enjoyed it and found it helpful!

My professional IT advice has always been that “Automation is better than doing it by hand!”

:^0

Not even close

In reply to More double entendres per square inch…

Get Jaqui and GG out here and things can get “interesting” REAL quick. 😀

Not…even…close?… :-(

In reply to Not even close

🙁
🙁 🙁 🙁
🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁

:_|
:_| :_| :_|
:_| :_| :_| :_| :_|

:_| :_|

:_| :_|

:_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_| :_|

…unsupported flameout bastard…

:0

In reply to Not…even…close?… :-(

:_|

Are you going to make me search them out? :0

In reply to Not…even…close?… :-(

Have you never heard of the “Impure Brigade”?

Weill as the unofficial Leader

In reply to Are you going to make me search them out? :0

You’re not going to have to do a lot of searching are you. :p

😀 :^0 😀 :^0

Col ]:)

actually

In reply to Weill as the unofficial Leader

it is just HARD to keep them all straight?

:0 ;\ ]:) 😀 :p

(there ya go Mae. that should brighten your day! 😡 )

Here I come to save the daaaaaay!

In reply to Are you going to make me search them out? :0

you rang?

Someone called the Impure Brigade?

Here’s one of ’em……

How can I help?

🙂

GG

:^0

In reply to Here I come to save the daaaaaay!

…

Ummm…

In reply to Are you going to make me search them out? :0

Ummm, that’s not the point, is it? X-( :^0

Parding?

In reply to Ummm…

Was only offering to help….

mind you, someone who thinks that automation is better than doing it manually…..

well, you’ve OBVIOUSLY always remembered to have spare batteries close at hand……

]:)

GG

yay! return of the Impure Brigade, now, where’s dear ol’ DangerMouse and that beautiful Red Glow???

Hey GG…

In reply to Ummm…

That post of mine was in reply to JD.

This is an IT forum. [i]IT[/i] automation is better than doing it by hand. What are [i]you[/i] thinking? ]:) :^0

Spare batteries. Spare insulation. Spare energy. Spare time. Spare favors. Whatever it takes to get the job done and completely satisfy. I’m speaking about IT of course. ]:)

GG…Automation is…

In reply to Ummm…

Automation is where you bring in a fantastic machine and it does the job for you reliably over and over in a way that is simply not possible when you do it by hand. It works all night if you want, never balks, never calls in sick, and never has a headache. It’s really quite remarkable. I recommend it highly.

P.S. The Impure Brigade…Can I join?

Join?

In reply to Ummm…

I think you already did!

Welcome to the Impure Brigade! Now, if you see a red glow in the sky over your side of the pond, that’ll be DangerMouse (DMambo) blushing.

(Quite cute, really, but it’s a good game seeing how bright we can get that glow!)

If you hadn’t gathered, there are a few of us in the Brigade, and all have an aptitude for double entendres, and can take threads into the gutter with alarming alacrity.

Now that you have me in Minx mode (oh, look, there’s another……)

I assume that “automation” was the power part of jd’s blow up doll??

]:)

GG

Danger Mouse? :0

In reply to Ummm…

I always liked Penfold better. DM would get too involved in what he was doing, lose situational awareness, and get creamed.

Penfold was always smart enough to duck.

Edit: Read the rest of the subthread. Still like Penfold better! 😀

jd……

In reply to Are you going to make me search them out? :0

knowing that great minds think alike, are you by chance thinking of the same post I am??

The one that made you go to the restroom for the rest of the afternoon after reading it???

Hmm.

I think I may have saved that somewheres…

M’on it! (literally!)

]:)

GG

Pre-edited for speed

Yes my dear

In reply to jd……

that is the one!

If you would be ever so kind? 😡

EnBee should even remember the one, as he posted the pics of the bathroom! 😀 (yes, from the outside…)

You said it!

In reply to More double entendres per square inch…

It’s great. I needed a laugh today with all the nonsense going on at my job. Besides, as you said, there is useful information in the thread too.

What do you mean, the user doesn’t want pop-ups? And here I though that would be a necessary part of the process. 😉

Thanks…

In reply to You said it!

Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it.

ROTFL!!!!

In reply to More double entendres per square inch…

.

Thanks…

In reply to ROTFL!!!!

Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it…

Use a VMWare client

In reply to User wants porn

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.

2 simple answers for you

In reply to User wants porn

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.

Read Write

In reply to 2 simple answers for you

Doesn’t the flash drive have a limited r/w life, so you would hit the limit easily.

depends if the user is surfing or collecting

In reply to Read Write

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.

Recovery CD

In reply to User wants porn

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.

sure

In reply to User wants porn

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

The News Quiz

In reply to User wants porn

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.

😀

Miost of the suggestions are good ones

In reply to User wants porn

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.

ahhhh… the famous friend/home user eh :)

In reply to User wants porn

Just admit it, it’s for yourself!

But all kidding aside, sounds like this is one of em people that wants it all without going through any trouble.

Best option, vmware player with Ubuntu distro; http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ and http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/browserapp.html

If you can’t get him to do that, the locking down of with Zone or FF might work. But he’ll not be getting all of his favorite xxx content

Absalutely a VM job

In reply to User wants porn

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

HAL’s solution is better!

In reply to Absalutely a VM job

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.

As I have said before

In reply to HAL’s solution is better!

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?

The Cheapest Version of VMWare

In reply to HAL’s solution is better!

http://register.vmware.com/content/download.html

price = cost of ones internet connection, and bandwidth.

MS VS and PC are also same price.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

A Recap.

VMware server free.
MS Virtual PC and Server free.

Great for computer literate people

In reply to The Cheapest Version of VMWare

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. 😀

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

So JD has some work to do.

In reply to Great for computer literate people

I pretty sure he can set it up so that the user is oblivious of what is going on.

Oh, the user

In reply to So JD has some work to do.

is oblivious all right…… :p

the safest way on a windows box is not to do it…

In reply to Oh, the user

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.

The SAFE way

In reply to Oh, the user

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)

Seven-Eleven?

In reply to Oh, the user

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

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

if this is the case then

In reply to Oh, the user

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. 😉

untrue

In reply to HAL’s solution is better!

vmware server is free
vmware player is free
MS virtual PC is free

Not worth it

In reply to Absalutely a VM job

Do yu realise the kind of machine required to run vmplayer – freeware – at a reasonably decent rate?

I recommend stripped down version of BartPe customised to the clients liking.

Else multisession Puppy linux LiveCD with USB stick for satorage. Check it out. It will really meet the bill.

porn sites

In reply to User wants porn

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.

BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH

In reply to User wants porn

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?

I am happy

In reply to BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH

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.

To be fair, original said “safely surf porn”…

In reply to I am happy

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.

That package does more than that

In reply to To be fair, original said “safely surf porn”…

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?

Support for JD

In reply to That package does more than that

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).

Hey Mr Alfred E Newman

In reply to Support for JD

Keep your morality out of my technology!

Hey dude!

In reply to Hey Mr Alfred E Newman

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…

Wasn’t morality

In reply to Hey Mr Alfred E Newman

it was stupidity.

yep… just rhetorical

In reply to Hey Mr Alfred E Newman

and “whoops” you are absolutley right …. missed the quote “by that much!” Doh!

Being out of line

In reply to Support for JD

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.

Sheesh..

In reply to That package does more than that

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.

“Reduculous”?

In reply to Sheesh..

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-(

My point

In reply to “Reduculous”?

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. 🙂

My experience

In reply to “Reduculous”?

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

Which, of course, is

In reply to “Reduculous”?

a good reason why one would want to remain anonymous..

How porn sites do it

In reply to “Reduculous”?

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-)

JD I’ve seen this type of behaviour here

In reply to That package does more than that

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. 😀

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

Col

I’m not accusing anyone, only speculating based on prior facts..read on

In reply to To be fair, original said “safely surf porn”…

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.

I would venture

In reply to I’m not accusing anyone, only speculating based on prior facts..read on

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.

Plus

In reply to I would venture

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

JD already explained…

In reply to I’m not accusing anyone, only speculating based on prior facts..read on

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

So you would find it totally acceptable

In reply to I’m not accusing anyone, only speculating based on prior facts..read on

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. 😀

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]

That was far more than “speculating

In reply to I’m not accusing anyone, only speculating based on prior facts..read on

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.

there’s a huge difference between

In reply to I’m not accusing anyone, only speculating based on prior facts..read on

trying to keep a pc from becoming infected, and trying to clean up traces of illegal activity!
This friend of JD’s should be credited for trying to keep is pc up to snuff, not dragged down because he likes to look at pornography.

You’re so far offbase it’s ridiculous…

In reply to I’m not accusing anyone, only speculating based on prior facts..read on

Chill out, you’re embarrasing yourself.

Tho to be fair …

In reply to I am happy

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.

but being anonymous

In reply to Tho to be fair …

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.

“Legal” varies around the globe

In reply to but being anonymous

What is legal in Amsterdam is not legal in the US, for instance. Same for parts of the former Soviet block.

Me, I’m a firm believer in removing all restricitons on trade for goods and services that are legal elsewhere.

I’m also a firm believer that the police should go after axe-murderers, rapists, corporate fraudsters and so forth, and leave morality to the church.

Leave morality to the church?

In reply to “Legal” varies around the globe

On a purely advisory basis, I hope. My morality is between my preferred deity and myself; nobody else got any business butting in!

Nick Remember

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

I’m the one with the cameras mounted on all your windows looking in just to make sue you do nothing WRONG. 😀

Col ]:)

Hal, I hope you caught that

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

Saaa-lute!

^^|^^

😀

You have got to be SOOOO bored! :^0

Edit: yes

It’s a nasty job but someone has to do it. :D

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

But on the up side you’re not the only one that I have to supervise to see what you are doing. :p

I’m currently putting together the [b]Thought Police[/b] to control you lot of miscreants. :^0

Col ]:)

Thought police?

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

Won’t work. This is America and nobody here has had a rational thought in decades! :p

rational?

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

you mean to try to tell me there has been ANY kind of thought, rational or otherwise? :0

:p

Well, now that you mention it

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

I tawt i taw a puddy tat! :^0

HAL9000: I didn’t know you were with the NSA?

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

…

As I said [i]T O F IT[/i]

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

It’s a Nasty Job but Someone Has To Do It. 😀

As a singed up for life member of the Immoral Minority who intends on growing Old Disgracefully I’m trying. :p

Col

WWW

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

[soapbox]
Nick said
“This is America and nobody here has had a rational thought in decades”

I am not surprised, look outside…..

…. see if you can see any other countries hooked into the Internet?

This ISN’t America mf, THIS is the World Wide Web
[/soapbox]

(sorry folks, but this narrow mindedness gets my goat)

Think of it this way Kiltie

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

We were only poking fun at ourselves.

If we had taken a stab at you and yours, would it be different goat that you would be taking to the prom? :0 [i](and here we are always told it is [b]SHEEP[/b] that is prefered out there!)[/i]

If you wish to go ahead and poke fun at “No location specified”, feel free to step right up and join in the fun. Exactly how long has it been since ANY thought has been your way? I leave that to you.

I am sure you can now see why we took the turn we did? Kind of a “speak for yourself”, so I did. :p

cheers!
😀

Mea culpa

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

As often as I rail about how provincial and narrow-minded Americans are, I am ashmaed to have to admit that, while composing the previous post, I thought like an American. That is, I didn’t think. 😀

Sheep JD?

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

I thought that was the Aussies favourite…

…or was it the Kiwis?

as the joke goes (rephrased)…

“Down under, a place where MEN are MEN and sheep are nervous…”

hmmmm…. Sheep & Goats, NOW we are getting into a different scenario, that a user might want hidden….

bestiality
(blushes)

*** wink ***

EDIT: btw, here in Scotland, we breed Aberdeen Angus cattle (not sheep or goats) for scrumptious steaks, not for……

Kiltie it’s New Zealand or the Kiwis in AU you are thinking of

In reply to Leave morality to the church?

Which reminds me [b]Neil where is my Honorary Ph.D.[/b] :^0

Col ]:)

Applause!

In reply to BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH

Applause to you sir!

All of us make errors. The best of us admit them.

Applause!

1 Vote for Opera

In reply to User wants porn

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.

Check them out?

In reply to 1 Vote for Opera

Interesting little research project for you JD….

*** wink ***

Or teach him how to use torrents and other p2p

In reply to User wants porn

so that he can just download all the stuff that he needs. or maybe not ^_^

Most definitely NOT

In reply to Or teach him how to use torrents and other p2p

There are a lot of virus-ridden applications distributed on P2P. Don’t even touch it without a up to date virus checker.

The porn that’s available on there includes illegal material and sometimes it’s misnamed to disguise the content. There’s enough that isn’t to turn any parent into a panic stricken mess and possibly put them in jail through ignorance.

The guys who build porn sites put their stuff out as well. So you can end up with videos with links to their sites embedded in them and such like.

Before you know where you are media player has launched IE and they have script kiddie opportunity.

I assume you are refering to

In reply to Most definitely NOT

packages like limewire and such for this?

I completely got out of that when the plug got pulled on Napster.

I had not heard of getting the illegal content when your not looking for it.

Oh yes

In reply to I assume you are refering to

Some people download said porn and then rename the files to ‘hide’ it.
P2P clients like emule are signature based though. I downloaded a video clip which according to the file name was a live recording of the band Rammstein, and got a video featuring some top heavy bints called Tiffany Towers and other indicative names. I wasn’t offended, just annoyed , took me three days to download, it wouldn’t preview and then it wasn’t what I wanted. Music was crap too.

After RTFMing I found Emule has a facility to show all the filenames a file has, best to use it, otherwise you could end up with a picture of a girl who is far too underdeveloped to be Ms Spears naked.

Bearing in mind by default you share what you download and if you’re are a newbie not knowing that delete is not very effective. Just stay right away from it.

That is another thing

In reply to Oh yes

I had completely forgotten you could get more than mp3’s off of this.

There were people having issues where by default more of the hard drive was shared out than the user realized. can you say “oops”?

http://www.ugoplayer.com/music/duhastrodents.html
Something cool that every Rammstein fan should see! 😀

JD, I think isolation and easy restore is key here

In reply to User wants porn

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. 🙂

I reckon there …

In reply to JD, I think isolation and easy restore is key here

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.

Newsgroups

In reply to User wants porn

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.

Bingo! Usenet and good newsreader

In reply to Newsgroups

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.

I’m sorry, I can’t help it…

In reply to User wants porn

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.

no, I must have read that wrong….

In reply to I’m sorry, I can’t help it…

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? ;\

So he wants adult content?

In reply to User wants porn

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

Go to…

In reply to User wants porn

… Google’s image search: http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi&q=. This way he can look at all the images he wants to without worrying about getting any badware.

Fire that client immediately and get out

In reply to User wants porn

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.

You have missed the point of this thread

In reply to Fire that client immediately and get out

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.

He read the thread title

In reply to You have missed the point of this thread

and maybe a few post titles. There is no way he read and understood JD’s original post.

Lazy people make everyone look bad

In reply to He read the thread title

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.

Based on his post…

In reply to Lazy people make everyone look bad

…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. ;\

I absolutely cannot believe it either TLComp

In reply to Fire that client immediately and get out

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?

And they attack me for that same statement! sheesh!

In reply to Fire that client immediately and get out

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.

Truth be told

In reply to And they attack me for that same statement! sheesh!

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.

If it helps any

In reply to Truth be told

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.

I need to do some testing first

In reply to If it helps any

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.

If you go bootable linux

In reply to I need to do some testing first

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.

Tigger: About trying a different OS

In reply to If you go bootable linux

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”

Testing purposes

In reply to If you go bootable linux

Testing with the gaming information sites? And here I was steeling myself to the “ordeal” of having to make the sacrifice and surf some porn to test this out! ]:) :^0

Just got buried in my “Corporate finance” class, and this weekend is the “Youth hunt” that they let only the minors out dear ( 😀 ) hunting, so that shoots this week down.

I did get a system to play with. Think it is PIII 500. If it gets trashed, so what.

I need to print off this discussion, because it has a lot of good ideas. Then make a list of the ideas and try the best ideas one at a time.

This would fit in the new blog format Jay was talking about. Will have to contact him and see when that would start up. The one thing I don’t like about the blogs is it not showing up under the “recent posts by my contacts” list. Maybe that will change.

After I have this going, I have been wanting to build a linux gaming system for a long time! Would be a good time to get back into WoW. (dispite Mae’s little video. I am still trying to find out how to become a member! 😀 )

JD: Testing…Ahem

In reply to If you go bootable linux

[i]”Testing with the gaming information sites?”[/i]

No, nothing so exciting or fun. Just software testing.

—–

[i]”And here I was steeling myself to the “ordeal” of having to make the sacrifice and surf some porn to test this out!”[/i]

I [i]know[/i] this is going to be a difficult sacrifice for you. But, I’m sure that your commitment to professionalism will help you to conduct a thorough test of the new system from start…to finish! :^0

JD if he’s willing to change the OS

In reply to I need to do some testing first

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

I was thinking that or

In reply to JD if he’s willing to change the OS

a slave HD that is FAT32 that could be mounted by either.

Biggest concern would be to scan drive BEFORE he goes back to windows.

If I ask him to change OS’s, the answer will be “no”. If I don’t TELL him it is a different OS it just might work. Get him using it before he realizes what he is using.

I did this with OpenOffice recently. We do not use MS Office, but the Lotus Smartsuit. It works great, but there are people that send and receive files from outside the company that are all MS.

For a zero level user (head of accounting) I simply told her I installed the most recent version of “Office”. She is using it just fine. B-)

What they don’t know, doesn’t bother them.

Try Puppy Linux

In reply to I need to do some testing first

This I believe would be ideal for your client. It is a multisession Live Linux CD. Everything he installs /saves/downloads get written back to the cd/dvd & are available at the next boot just like in a hdd. If you go the DVD route you would not need to remaster the dvd for a couple weeks at least.

Does not need HD installation & runs entirely from ram. If you make a swap partition available it will literally fly. Invluded utilities will fulfill 95 % of his requirements.

No. I didn’t misunderstand…

In reply to Fire that client immediately and get out

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.)

Man, loosen up…

In reply to No. I didn’t misunderstand…

You are entirely too anal (no pun intended) about this. The guy is an acquaintance/friend… not a bonified ‘client’, hence the beer-for-work agreement.

As for ‘child porn’… how would you ‘come across’ it on the hard drive? Do you generally use thumbnails in Windows Explorer and actively search through folders? Sounds like someone who’s got a bit of a voyeuristic nature.

Not entirely relevant…

In reply to No. I didn’t misunderstand…

The discussion is already PAST the moral stage of whether to help a friend, we are at the stage of HOW to help.

The word “porn” has no legal definition that I know; however, each state very likely has specific definitions of obscenity — some little detail that must exist for an image to be illegal; and which lacking, no matter how otherwise offensive, is not illegal.

I have encountered people that think Michaelangelo’s “David” is pornographic soley because the statue is naked, or nude, depending on your language.

So, those people arguing the morality of “porn” cannot very well know that they are even discussing the same things.

Having said all that, if someone were to ask me the same question, how to safely surf porn, the first thing I would want to know is what he means by “safe”. I do not think it can be done; certainly not with the stated parameters (insist on using Windows is the first major problem with the idea).

Even if all you are doing is surfing for the Swimsuit Edition, you could inadvertenly load something illegal into your browser cache and now you have a problem. Where this is likely, running everything from ramdisk has some benefits, but even there, the places you visit are recorded by your friendly neighborhood Domain Name Server and very likely there’s a webcache between you and the source and IT is caching everything you do.

What legal implications ?

In reply to No. I didn’t misunderstand…

If JD taught the guy how to surf porn safely, how can he possibly be liable in anyway for what sort of porn the guy surfs ?

When you are wrong just say my bad, you’ll get more respect from other professionals.

hmmmm

In reply to What legal implications ?

“When you are wrong just say my bad, you’ll get more respect from other professionals”

But no marks from your English teacher

——

<<< teasing you Tony 😉

I also want some

In reply to User wants porn

Please send all your porn pics to collspam@googlemail.com thanks

If you develop a safe porn application..

In reply to User wants porn

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.

actually,

In reply to If you develop a safe porn application..

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.

Please keep on sticking with this quest

In reply to actually,

I commend you for sticking with this problem, despite the obvious side-tracks, and flames. You are so right that this issue affects more than porn-searchers. I have two gamer clients who are in similar boats. They really hurt when their systems slow down – then they yell for help.

I’d like to switch them to Linux but they are reluctant to stay there. Only one is open to it IF they can still get their games to work seamlessly.
We are experimenting at least.

So far, my best solution is SLED-10, Firefox and an external Router/firewall. I set up dual boot with 3 partitions: SUSE (3 second delay before default boot), XP, and a small DATA partition. Anything to be saved goes to DATA and when the system is too clogged, I walk him through restoring the Linux drive only. Takes about an hour to do it, decreasing as he becomes more familiar (ie. it happens often). Anything written to DATA is scanned by mutiple freeware scanners from windows before being saved there.

Gamers won’t give up memory for VM, so virtual solutions aren’t available in my case.

So when you find a GOOD solution to the common problem (many of us don’t like to admit the number of times we’ve WISHED for a solution), please post it far and wide. We ALL need it.

Thanks Roy

In reply to Please keep on sticking with this quest

It is really cool that so many here were able to focus on the point of the discussion, securing a system NO MATTER WHAT!

As this is pretty much the “Worst case scenerio”, If we can all come up with a working solution for this, we can secure against just about anything. some of the ideas even being able to be used on our work LANs to keep the users runtime high.

Stomach

In reply to If you develop a safe porn application..

Also you have to get thos wrist braces to keep your carpel tunnel in check while you are counting your profits.

lock it down

In reply to User wants porn

try Sandboxie and use processgaurd and ewido

I get rid of malware

In reply to User wants porn

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

Ram drive for browsing?

In reply to User wants porn

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.

Steer him to “watchersweb.com”

In reply to User wants porn

This is a little like “How do I associate with gangsters and not get into trouble?”

Watchersweb is a safe site run by a woman in Australia and has links to other sites that are presumably safe as well. It should meet his needs.

VM Player

In reply to User wants porn

Vmware has a canned firefox/linux vm that will run on their free player. Crank it up surf what you want shut it down. No worries.

Thanks

In reply to User wants porn

I’m glad you started this thread, because my wife is one of those that will click on anything just to get it out of her way so she can see the display. I reload her machine every 2 or 3 months. Really appreciate the suggestions.

BartPE

In reply to User wants porn

Instead of using Knoppix or another live Linux CD, since he doesn’t want to use linux, use BartPE. It still uses Firefox (if you add it to the image, I think) and you can add Anti-virus, Spybot, and MANY other things. Then when there is an update to Firefox or something work a CD, just burn him a new CD. Or burn two copies on a CD-RW and then you won’t go through a ton of CDs.

Result: His “safety” with minimal effort from you!

VMware

In reply to User wants porn

Another possible option would be to try using VMware or something of the sort. By creating a virtual machine just lock that down as tight as possible and have him use that when he wants to search porn.
If something happens to get on it, which is very likely no matter how many spyware, antivirus, etc. programs you have or how secure you try to make it, no big deal just wipe that virtual machine and create a new one.

Libraries and schools use Deepfreeze.

In reply to User wants porn

Installed on a clean OS, it doesn’t matter what the user downloads and installs, the next time the system is rebooted it reverts to the clean image. The only way to save ANYTHING is onto another drive. You can find it at http://www.faronics.com and it costs less than $25.

Protect

In reply to User wants porn

Using Spybot S&D to immunize the system, McAfee for virus protection and to protect with unknown virus’s which is Heuristics scanning, make the hosts file read only, use supercleaner to clean any cookies and files associated with where he has been, a popup blocker such as google and zonealarm to block incoming requests he should be fine. He may still get one or two spyware but using all these tools will help protect him to the utmost. Good luck.

Put ’em on a Mac w/ OS9

In reply to User wants porn

Not a lot of profit for malware developers writing for an OS that has gone by the wayside.
He can pick-up an old iMac, or whatever, for a song and that way, he can keep his “real” computer secure for banking, surfing (“regular” surfing 😉 etc.
Welcome to the insane world of balancing rights with responsibility.
TLComp has a valid point, guys. We are professionals, not just 17 year-old neighborhood hackers. With degrees, certifications and professional designations, you cross over the fine line between helping people to operating under the color of authority. You owe it to your client to explain the full impact of any technical issue, as you are able to understand it.
Say he begins to experience elevated unsolicited spam as a result of his hobby. Some of it will put remailers on his hard drive and send porn (in the background via sendmail, not in his mail client where it would be in his “sent” box) to everyone in his address book.
What are you going to tell him, that the stork brought it?
What if he has addresses in his address book like his nieces and nephews? His mom? His boss? You and your company?
Ripples in the pond from the stone “innocently” tossed in the center can reach pretty far 🙂
Put him on a computer/OS that has no sendmail built in, no email programs on it, nothing but the browser and whatever webcam or *editing* programs he requires and be done with it.
It’s not a moral issue. It’s a professional one, and clients depend on us to advise them about things they don’t know that they DON’T know about using technology.

How about a 24″ brand new iMac?

In reply to Put ’em on a Mac w/ OS9

I was thinking along the same lines, but like the malware some web sites also won’t support obsolete browsers. Firefox under OS X runs very well, and the new 24″ iMac is sooooo sexy! 😉

VM

In reply to User wants porn

Create a VM and have him do his “surfing” on that. When he gets “infected”, he can blow that VM away, and put the copy on there.

Side comment: That’s just gross

I’m not a prude but seriously…

In reply to User wants porn

why would you even bother with this,
is a case of beer really worth it – even in Canada where the beer is expensive it wouldn’t be worth the hassle of this kind of job.

Strange one indeed… If you really must help this guy, forget the win2k machine, M$ will be ending support for it soon and how much can you really lock it down, have him upgrade that machine to winxp pro so that your efforts in maintaining these machines won’t be different. Install antivirus software, anti-malware software, a decent firewall product, have him run in restricted user mode but obviously give him admin login credentials so if he does want to install stuff he can’t just “run as” and work accordingly, and let the chips fall where they may.

If he’s really a good friend why would he bother you with this nonsense, plus what if your kids were to find out what you were doing, even if they’re old enough to understand that you aren’t doing any of this questionable surfing yourself (we’re all adults here so who cares if you do or don’t) – I wouldn’t want them to mention any of this work in all of it’s details to the ex (kids have a way of spilling the beans sometimes), that could only mean trouble for you, people hear this stuff and will spin it loose in every degree imaginable. No matter how innocent the intent it just doesn’t look right to anyone not directly involved.

You said it yourself you don’t have time to mess with this anymore now that you’ve got your boys full time again, if you need an excuse use the kids as one – tell the guy you’re sorry but parenting is a full-time gig and you just can’t help him with no offense intended: it’s a real excuse not something you have to drum up and it gets you off the hook doing this kind of “non-profit” work and free’s up your time with your kids and for actual profit work.

Just my 0.02 cents bro, take it anyway you like, just looking after your best interests.

Let me know how it works out.

Once again, this is not a thread about morality

In reply to I’m not a prude but seriously…

This is a thread about PC security. You can leave the judgements about the origin of the thread behind, as it applies to all aspects of browsing.

I have found that a router with a firewall, Zone Alarm Pro, Spybot S&D, AdAware, and Norton AV, and NEVER using IE to browse anything that can be seen in another browser, has kept my home network pretty secure. I also tend to keep an eye on running tasks with Taskinfo from Iarsn, and Google anything that looks odd in the task list. I fully immunize with S&D and try to do full scans with S&D, AdAware, and Norton AV weekly.

Setting up a False persona to use as a substitute for your own personal information can be handy. That way you simply have to reference a prepared or memorized list for info if you want to use a site that requests personal information. That’s also handy for the many newspaper and information sites that now require registrations.

I found that browsing with Opera, with the redirect notification option enabled helps as well. It will stop a redirect and give a link to continue if you want. I like the disconnect button in the status bar at the bottom of Netscape. That was a great help in the days before Popup blockers when you could easily find yourself in Popup hell.

It is a good idea to avoid sites that demand Credit Card details for things like age verification. There is much on the web that is free and free from entry hinderences like that. All this can be found with a simple Google search. If that site has content that you decide is worth the risk and you are giving them your CC number, you need to believe that you are going to be charged. There are age verification services available that charge a small fee and are basically front doors to affiliated sites. There are sites that just aggregate samples, and provide links to pay services. The better ones have ways to report sites that try to infect or have bad practices otherwise. It’s best to keep your eyes open (like that will be a problem) and try to judge sites as you would any online retailer. Does the site work? Are there broken links? Do the links take you to other sites? Are there redirects when you try to get to another part of the site? Have you heard about problems with this particular site/retailer?

The popularity of such content is undeniable, and is evidenced by its proliferation, so obviously many people want that content. The British version of the show Coupling had a great scene where one of the main characters gives a great impassioned monologue about how we have turned the Internet into a huge database of pictures of women’s bottoms. It was one of the funniest things I had ever seen. Adult content web sites now also seem to be a crucible in which to test PC security configurations, much as it was a good way to test bandwidth in the early days of the web.

Once again, I never said it was a thread about morality…

In reply to Once again, this is not a thread about morality

Seriously, I think it’s pretty much understood we’re discussing PC security here. I may have gone off on a tangent in one of my points but I don’t think I was preaching from the pulpit about morality so no need to start a discussion on that or title a response saying that I did that.

ZoneLabs makes a good firewall product, so I’ll agree with you there. Unfortunately that’s where it probably stops. They may be good for cleaning up fluff from light internet use but Spybot & Ad Aware are no where nearly sufficient at removing the kind of spyware that show’s up on pc’s that are used in the manner that JD started this discussion about. You’re fooling yourself if you think those apps keep you secure. Plus if you fully immunize with Spybot as you mentioned, you’ll probably prevent this user from accessing a certain number of questionable sites – the user in question wants unfettered access to everything. Norton AV is just crap, with so many alternatives out there I’m surprised that people still use it. Norton & McAfee are both product’s I’ll no longer use on any of my pc’s. If you’re looking for free, Grisoft makes AVG Free for personal use, if you don’t mind paying for a little better, their paid versions offer even better protection & more functionality – their software also doesn’t eat up system resources like Norton AV does. I believe Grisoft also own’s Ewido which makes a decent anti-spyware product, Ewido Anti-Malware, pick it up & use it, it’s very good and I believe they offer a free version or at least a long lived trial version. Webroot’s Spysweeper is also an excellent product, I highly recommend it. PrevX also makes a great app for this. Also, don’t forget to use HiJackThis.exe, a great product for finding out what’s loading up on your machine during bootup, and you definitely need some tools for scanning & removing rootkits if the machine is going to be used as mentioned. That’s just the tip of the iceberg – also don’t bother scanning for spyware in regular windows mode, you’re just spinning your wheels, spyware scans & removal need to be performed in windows safe mode – it’s the only way to guarantee finding as much internet ‘fluff’ as possible.

I’ve used Firefox & Opera but still return to IE, IE7 is quite good although alot of sites don’t show up properly in it, it’s a much more secure surfing environment than was ever available in IE.

I never tested bandwidth using the methods you described: web based applications, mainframe access over WAN connections, email, video conferencing and multiplayer gaming (anyone remember the 1st DOOM?) tested bandwidth just fine, I don’t ever remember using a test like surfing questionable websites as a metric for bandwidth testing, I don’t think it’s a great test for pc security either.

– just my 0.02 cents cdn, feel free to agree/disagree

rob,wpg

You never said it, but the implication is there.

In reply to Once again, I never said it was a thread about morality…

The last half of the ‘not a prude’ post is spent trying to convince JD that he is better off without friends that use porn, as though that is a measure of their worth.

Thanks for the reviews and recommendations on the security tools. I do use HiJackThis as well, just forgot to mention it. I can’t believe that you recommend IE of any flavor to surf for anything, let alone content that lends itself to high risk providers. It is the prime target by a wide margin, not only due to its marketshare, but the apparent ease with which it is exploited.

I do believe that JD’s friend wanted to surf porn, not necessarily have unfettered access to everything out there. Seems to be a good idea to avoid sites blocked by a tool like S&D, in fact, that sounds like what was meant by ‘safe surfing for porn’.

In the initial explosion of the web, I knew guys at some local ISPs that would test new server installations by setting up some adult oriented sites and throwing a little spam into usenet and see how the system handled it. It was a bit adhoc, but it was a quick and dirty (so to speak) test that could be run over the weekend to see how it handled high demand. Then the bigger ISPs bought them out and now Cox owns everything. I would imagine that larger professional organizations would use a more metric oriented approach to testing now. On the other hand, JD has a bit of a guinea pig in his friend now. That kind of experience can be handy.

In the eary days of FF

In reply to Once again, I never said it was a thread about morality…

I hit porn, ring tones and ‘free’ mp3 sites. All three are script kidie magnets. Course this was fir my home PC, I’ll trust the admin guys at work to come up with a more scientific method. LOL

As a comparison between FF and IE on windows 98 it was very effective.

A challenge to learn more

In reply to I’m not a prude but seriously…

As I do need to be able to protect my real users at work, the more I learn about this, the better. If I can harden a windows system for this use, with the restrictions I have placed on me, I should be able to protect my work users that HAVE to stay secure.

I always have time to learn more about my job of protecting my users, I just don’t have time to keep doing wipes and reloads. Don’t learn anything from that, so it is of little value to me.

Does that better explain where I am coming from and why?

Are you going to tell me no one you know EVER goes to a porn site, or just that you don’t talk about it? How many times have you had to clean up a system, and you can tell it is toast from porn? The only difference is, I know what I am facing instead of having the user lie to my face and me having to pretend like I don’t know they are being dishonest with me? Which really is better?

What do you think?

I hear you, I hear you…

In reply to A challenge to learn more

but I just feel it’s like comparable to testing out a bullet proof vest to see how secure it will keep you in the event that you are shot at or playing with fire and hoping you don’t get burnt. No thanks, I’ll remove myself from the situation and leave it at that.

If I work on a user’s/friend’s winxp pc (soon to be vista), updating, securing & cleaning it to the point where it’s brand new again, I also go the extra effort of resizing the main ntfs partition in today’s uber huge harddrives and creating a 2nd partition (10-20gb or whatever size is required to hold the drive image & drivers and user data) where I can store a drive image of this system in it’s current clean state. If this person farts around on this pc and causes it to become unusable to the point where when they run anti-spyware/virus tools to clean it and it doesn’t help, I just backup personal data (my documents, pic’s, tunes, etc.) and re-image the pc, 10-20 min later (maybe less if you’re running a speedy SATA drive in your machine) and the pc is new again, copy over the personal user data, download some windows updates, update the drive image and that’s it until the pc bites the dust again.

Yes that’s a cop-out but it’s also alot more efficient, because you can literally spend several hours to a few days (taking into account we all work and have personal lives after work which require our time and then have to find time to do this work) cleaning the crap out of a pc that’s been used for nothing good.

Trust me I’m not judging you or anyone else, it’s got nothing to do with that – I’m just saying that it’s alot of wasted effort protecting pc’s from the fluff they accumulate when surfing questionable websites. I’ve done it too much and it’s just wasted effort because the same people do the same things to their pc’s, the cycle won’t stop so you either keep banging your head on the wall and do something different.

How secure can any pc be in today’s internet/always connected environment, if anyone thinks they can truly protect a pc out there from every risk present & available on the internet they’re just fooling themselves – no such thing as a 100% secure pc unless it’s disconnected from the net and powered off for good!

At my workplace we use software by Websense which is a company that specializes in internet filtering & security software. In a nutshell it pretty much prevents users from going to those “questionable” websites, if you try to access a site that’s been flagged as innappropriate you’re redirected to a page that tells you that you’ve been blocked from accessing that site because it falls under a specific category of sites not deemed appropriate. If you block the ability of getting to these sites, you stop the pc problems caused by these sites.

Rule of thumb, prevention is always easier than the cure.

Since in your specific case this isn’t an option, why not just download & install microsoft virtual pc on this person’s pc’s and let him surf the net in those virtual environments, seriously I can’t think of anything safer than that. Create a virtual machine and a copy of that virtual machine, when he toasts one of those VM’s, turf it and use the backup VM and so on & so forth.

Anti-spyware software will never be a solution, you need several different utilities to hopefully catch 90% of the fluff on your machines, same thing with Anti-virus software. Zonelab’s firewall software is good and free for home use but no firewall software is perfect so that isn’t a solution either.

In school, they won’t teach how to secure a pc in an environment where user’s are allowed to download crap and surf questionable sites because as much as people don’t want to admit, there’s no market for that – home user’s usually don’t have an IT dept living with them at home to take care of their pc’s. It’s assumed that in the corporate world that user’s won’t use their pc’s like they do at home.

Maybe you’ve discovered a niche you can turn into a business opportunity. Setup a new pc, secure it as much as you can and then purposely use the machine for those questionable purposes, if you can secure it to the point where the pc isn’t buggered up with internet filth & fluff then maybe you can teach classes to regular home user’s on how to do this or charge decent money to secure pc’s just for this type of personal use. It may not be my cup of tea but maybe there’s a demand for this and it isn’t being met.

I would never question your motives or abilities JD, I hope I never came across that way to you with my original post. When you get past your incredible sense of humor (just kidding, just kidding), you’re actually a pretty good guy to talk to, TR wouldn’t be the same without you – I’ve told you that before.

If you do find a method of locking down that pc while giving that user all the freedom to do whatever he pleases on that pc, let me know what you did to accomplish this – I’d be interested in hearing about what worked and what didn’t work.

take it easy….
rob,wpg

Safely Surf Porn??????

In reply to User wants porn

That’s like saying Central Intelligence Agency.

It’s an oximoron. There is no such thing as “safely surf porn”. If he is in the USA many sites considered “porn” sites are engaging in illegal activity so if you assist him and he goes to a site considered “illegal” you have made yourself culpable. It’s not like you help someone setup their computer and you have no idea what their using it for. This guy is telling you he is playing in dangerous waters and wants your help. You have been forewarned my friend and I use that moniker very loosely.

Just like driving a car

In reply to Safely Surf Porn??????

you are never really safe, just safe-ER.

As for illegal, I think you have been sniffing glue.

Just because someone says they are surfing porn, first of all, does not mean the user is doing anything illegal.

second, if someone missrepresents what they are doing, it does not put me at fault.

If you KNOW someone is doing something illegal, that would be different.

Just like if I were a mechanic and I work on your car before you use it as a get-away car. Not my fault, not my problem.

Enjoy the glue.

Illegal

In reply to Just like driving a car

If you KNOW someone is doing something illegal, that would be different.

Those are your words. So when this guy gets busted with 300GB of kiddie porn pictures and he tells the cops, gee I thought it was legal because the guy from the computer shop set it up for me so I wouldn’t have any problems.

This guy is saying he wants to surf porn sites and he says “there are no children in the house so it’s ok”. The red warning lights should be flashing, whistles should be going off and this guy is crazy to setup a computer for the specific reason to safely surf porn sites.

Your example of cars is not a logical example because the owner of the computer has said he wants his system setup so he can safely surf porn.

….as far as glue is concerned you should really growup and engage in an adult discourse. Of course you could be 12 and the stupid glue remarks are expected and make perfect sense.

It was ME saying

In reply to Illegal

that there were no kids in the house, to give some background information to the USUALLY intellegent people that would come in here.

Safely surf porn is completely legal in the United States of America. You may have missed the memo.

As was pointed out to the TWO other gents, there has been nothing other than ONE package recommended by Mae, that has anything to do with covering tracks or anything along that line.

There has been NOTHING posted to indicate the User is trying to HIDE anything. They just want a system that will not crash all the time. Sure, MS might think THAT part is illegal, but anyone with a clue that actually read ANYTHING I have posted would be able to logically and clearly see that there is NO indication of anything illegal.

If you have a personal issue about someone that will surf legal porn on their personal computers from the privacy of their own homes, that is your problem.

Yeah, I am 12 years old, and joined TR back in 2000. Bet you wished you were that smart that early, huh?

I tried being logical and reasonable with you, but that approach doesn’t seem to work with you.

I was responding to whomeber suggested I stop sniffing glue

In reply to It was ME saying

Telling someone to stop sniffing glue is logical or reasonable????

I give up you are the best. Surf that porn and you will see what is legal and what isn’t.

Having said that I will turn in my badge.

By the way I was a 2000 alumni myself.

Illegal? Why stop there? How about treason?

In reply to Illegal

Ok, so the word “porn” makes you shudder. But, this thread really isn’t about porn. And, it’s certainly not about doing anything illegal. Kiddie porn? What? You can do better than that.

WHY STOP AT ILLEGAL?

Why stop at illegal? Let’s go for treason! How about safely surfing Al-Qaeda terrorist websites? If you work just a little harder, I’m sure you can think of all kinds of terrible things to pin on this thread about computer security.

STAY ON YOUR MEDS

You really must stay on your meds. This thread is about making a computer safe from malware that is acquired over the web. Porn websites are notorious for this. Game websites too.

READ THE THREAD

You obviously stopped reading after the word “porn”. Read the thread. You might learn something about computer security.

It’s not JD who’s going to jail, more likely you

In reply to Illegal

Ignorance of the law is not a defense. You try “I thought it was legal”, practice doing it in handcuffs with a plaintive whine in your voice.
It will make it more credible after they pass sentence.
The guys wants safety from malare not safety from prosecution, if he wanted that he would have to be a moron to let anyone near his computer.
There have been a few of them, but if he was one JD would have already given evidence!

Glue is very bad for you by the way, personally I recommend you stop.

keywords

In reply to Illegal

I have noticed that quite a few folk don’t read the topics posted, or even the words, instead they react to “keywords”

My ex was like that too, I couldn’t simply phone her from the office and say that I was….

“…tied up in a heavy session at the office, and I am afraid it will be late in bed tonight darling”

I had to choose my words carefully, or SHE would hear

TIED UP
SESSION
BED
DARLING

and assume either that I wanted kinky sex later, or was having it at the office!!!

(She was mentally ill, sorry to say, and passed away a few years ago)

But people react to certain “keywords”, and this is maybe all they read? (if taken out of the context in which they were used)

… Porn …
… Kids …

….. and they then make the wild jump to……

illegal stuff

.
.
.

jeez

btw TUFOP, not a good idea to flame JB, He’ll eat you for breakfast, if he is so inclined……

This is true

In reply to keywords

And many will join him.

JD has a solid reputation for being VERY above-board and not willing to tolerate anyone who woudl harm a child.

This is a discussion about security. You likely have some strong recommendations. Regardless of how we individually feel about such things, the ability to lock out the nasties on the web is a concern to us all.

Because of this thread, for instance, I have been directed to some great Puppy resources that I would have had to find elsewhere. But Kiltie knows Puppy so I have benefitted from his insight.

We need to have the savvy to protect our users. What better way to stress test than against porn or gaming sites?

And before you decide to take a bite out of me, the surgeons already did so- note my avatar.

Staying on-topic

In reply to This is true

There has been several posts here that were worthy of a full out assault, but after several deletes and re-writes, I would simply try to get some logic to these people to bring them around.

It really is a topic that even the prudish can learn from, dispite all the emails I have had to delete with the recommended porn links provided.

Where is the “I am a saint” emoticon when I need it? B-)

Doooode….

In reply to Safely Surf Porn??????

Get over yourself.

The vast majority of porn sites are legal. Legal in the US, and many other places.

You may not like it. Fine. Get off your high horse and get out of other people’s business.

JD is no more culpable than the person in the walmart who sold a someone a gun which subsequently gets used as a crime.

James

Porn Czar

In reply to User wants porn

http://www.thehun.net

This site is a yellow pages of sort for porn sites wanting to advertise. They post sample pics and list about 500 postings a day with an archive over a year.

If you wish to venture past this use windows Defender to block malware and firewall to protect.

turn up all security on explorer to prompt for Active X control installs and tell him never to install active x controls.

Make sure you have a good updated antivirus and if he doesn’t like all that tell him “Vince says to go to hell PERVERT!!”

Dude

In reply to Porn Czar

I am not looking to provide any of the porn, and has no place in a valid security discussion.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Question, would he see you there (hell)? Sounds like you know the web site well? :0

Porn Czar Redux

In reply to Dude

I thought for a moment he was calling for a government porn czar.

Apoint me. I will find the absolute lowest legal age for production/posession/sale/whatnot on the planet, institute this across the board in the U.S. and [b]ta-da![/b] illegal porn problem solved.

Next, illegal drugs …

wow!

In reply to Porn Czar

I dont actually have anything to contribute to the OP’s dilema, but I am amazed at how many replys this got. Especially since it references Porn..and not how to stop your users or malicious sites either.

lol…just an observation.

another observation

In reply to wow!

It is a fact that windows is not a secure environment.

It is also a fact that one of the most hostile places for a Windows PC is out on the porn sites.

If we can find a way to secure a windows system under these conditions, what do you think we could do given company policies and the more hands out in a corporate environment?

Most people took this as the challenge that it was, securing this system. If I had said the user was going to hack/crack sites which are just as dangerious, would it have made the discussion more valid in your mind?

The issue isn’t the porn. The issue is the security for a Windows system in a hostile environment.

now looking at it that way, are you really surprised now?

Also amazed…

In reply to wow!

With all these posts, no-one has managed to send me any pics? This is great, yet another example of a spam proof email address and infrastructure.

Actually

In reply to Also amazed…

I have been receiving more than my share of people that feel they must share their favorite porn sites with me. ~sigh~

deletedeletedeletedeletedeletedeletedeletedeletedeletedelete

Could be worse, JD

In reply to Actually

I tried to send you a list of my favorites, but the server rejected the email as too large. :0

:^0
]:)

Well if you like JD

In reply to Actually

I could give your e-mail address to the women across the road in the [b]Old Folks Home[/b] and after reading their description the sites that they forward to you will look positively tame in comparison to the way that they describe them. 😀

I found it impossible to keep a straight face when I was given some very graphic descriptions by women old enough to be my grandmother. :^0

Col ]:)

Excuse me MR. Hal 9000

In reply to Well if you like JD

but I prefer to keep my image of sweet little old ladies sitting around playing bingo, thank you very much! :p

Col, that is just one place I would rather not visit, mentally or otherwise! :0

And yes, I have known people working in the old folks home that would walk in and gramps is spanking his bad little room mate, and would not stop just because the nurse came in……

And that was before Viagra and all. Now the mobile men are in hot demand and got it 5 to 1 at least. Golden years anyone?

wow!

In reply to Porn Czar

I dont actually have anything to contribute to the OP’s dilema, but I am amazed at how many replys this got. Especially since it references Porn..and not how to stop your users or malicious sites either.

lol…just an observation.

Pervert?

In reply to Porn Czar

Personally, I think that graphic violence in a motion picture is much more offensive than graphic sex. So if you have ever watched “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” or Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ”…

Glad it’s not just me

In reply to Pervert?

That thinks violence is a bigger problem than sex. After the ‘boob seen round halftime’ I suspected that I was the only person on earth more concerned with overt messages of violence than a little extra skin.

Very true

In reply to Glad it’s not just me

Violence is so much more obscene than sex or bare skin. There isn’t anything wrong with sex, unless you were created in a petrie dish(or hatched), you are the result of sex. We’re so uptight about the portrayal of procreation, but shootings and decapitations and the like are okay?

But what about

In reply to Very true

violent sex? I little pain never hurt anyone… :p

Now when you talk about the hackem stackem movies, sure. They are so stupid now that all they do is try to come up with a new way to maim and mutilate the human body. Shock and horror when it should be admire and whore.

JD..

In reply to But what about

whatever you and your friends do up on brokeback mountain is your business.. 🙂

Have a nice weekend!

Don’t you judge me woman!

In reply to JD..

A safe and happy weekend to you as well! 😀

😡

no way…

In reply to JD..

I do what I want..

I’m gonna try to have a nice weekend. it could be life altering.. we’ll see..

Worry Free Porn Surfing

In reply to User wants porn

Download and install Microsofts’ Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP. If set up correctly it should answer all this concerns.

Basicly it will wipe(reverts back to a known system configuration) any changes made to the system during his online surfing.

If any of you have ever used a library’s internet connection it works just like that. I’ve installed it in a coffee house, that has a free internet station. It works very well.

Good part of it is that it’s FREE.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sharedaccess/default.mspx

Good Luck

Shared Computer Toolkit…

In reply to Worry Free Porn Surfing

That sounds like a good idea. – If the client isn’t willing to go through some changes or be willing to give up something in order to “surf safely” there’s little that a support person can do.

Business/personal standards

In reply to User wants porn

I would personally not have any hesitation risking the “bad feelings” by saying “Sorry, pal. You want porn, you’re on your own.” The old adage is still true: you can’t play in the mud without getting dirty. But that’s MY ethical/moral standard, and maybe not yours. I just can’t think of any redeeming value for porn, and I wouldn’t offer to make it easier or safer for someone else to indulge.

I really feel sorry for you

In reply to Business/personal standards

I do a bit of Volunteer work at an Old Folks home across the road from where I live and when a while ago I had more time available I was often in there cleaning up the computers that the Oldies used.

The youngest would be in their late 70’s and the computers that are there for the patients use are mostly used to surf porn and the women are by far the worst offenders. I still clean up their computers but far less often than what I used to as I’m busier but one or more of my staff throw in a bit of their time to do this work as like me they get to have a great laugh with the inmates of this institution.

Personally I wouldn’t want one of the Little Old Ladies talking down to me with me trying to tell her what she can and can not do in the last years of her life. You are free to have your own narrow bigoted beliefs but as far as I’m concerned as long as [b]No Law[/b] is being broken I really don’t care what’s a computer is used for. My son who plays games on high end Power User Workstations gets almost as much junk on his computer as the Porn Surfers get and is constantly trying to stay on top of keeping the system clean and he’s never been near a Porn Site but the game sites are almost as bad and if you lack the knowledge to lock down a Windows Computer so that it remains usable for the bulk of the necessary transactions that it’s used for you are not providing the service that you are charging Professional Rates for [b]Nor are you acting Professionally![/b]

If you lack the ability to act professionally then get the Hell Out of the Industry and let those of us who are interested in helping our customers get on with the job at hand.

I don’t have the right or obligation to force my Morals onto others as you appear to be attempting to do here Ossama!

Now I’ll bet that you’ll be fuming under your Puritan Hat as you are not a nasty Muslim Terrorist but why do you insist on acting like one who known what is better for the masses than they themselves do? Doesn’t your society allow a person to do as they please provided their actions do not affect others?

Col

have you ever notice col

In reply to I really feel sorry for you

that people that come off with the “holier than thou” bit are often the ones we see in the tabloids when they get busted for embezzlement or having an affair with their secritary.

You’re right there JD

In reply to have you ever notice col

And the scary thing is that they don’t see anything wrong with these actions. 😀

Col

Ahh!

In reply to have you ever notice col

Politicians! :^0

This year it’s Republicans. A decade ago it was Democrats.

Has anybody else ever noticed that Republicans usually get caught with their hand in the cookie jar and Democrats usually get caught with their hands on the cookie? ]:)

Well said!

In reply to I really feel sorry for you

Hal,

Well said! I was having a discussion with a co-worker some time ago, over the gay marraige issue. He was for it to be made illegal. I asked him why, and ultimatly it came down to that is was his beliefs. I said, “so you don’t beleive in separation of church and state then?” and he said “well, I guess not”. At that point I was ble to point out that neither does the Taliban.

The point is, I may not agree with or beleive in Homosexuality, but if I make a law about it, then I have legislated my morality onto someone else – i.e. I have forced them to follow my religion. This is not what the United States is supposed to be about, something about “Freedom of Religion”….its in the Constitution…remember that?

Anyway, I appreciate your comments Hal,

Thanks,

George

Actually, your point would have been lost on your coworker

In reply to Well said!

because anyone that has ever read the consitution knows full well that the government can’t determine a state religion, Nor interfear with the practice of ANY religion. “Separation of church and state” is something passed on, too and from uninformed people as a way to try to interfear with religion. Look it up sometime and you will find it is taken from a letter Jefferson wrote to a religious group that was afraid of another religion being determined to be the official state religion.

You would also be interested to know that states originally did have offical religions.

Taliban compared to Christian values? Not from this century, or the last or the one before that….

The thread is titled User Wants Porn

In reply to Well said!

I don’t get the connection between freedom of religion and porn?

The connection is that No One Has the right

In reply to The thread is titled User Wants Porn

To tell you what it is that you are going to do. That can be anything at all. Be it me insisting that you have to join the Moonies because I like them and their beliefs would that make you happy?

OH I don’t like Booze of any kind so I forbid you to partake of a drink of any alcoholic beverage of any kind no matter what the circumstances so you are prevented from using any Alcohol.

Or I like GWB and insist that you can vote for anyone so long as it’s GWB would this please you?

In a Democracy things are supposed to allow [b]Free Will[/b] of the people be that which religion they chose to believe in what if any Booze they drink or use for medical purposes or who they vote for or anything else at all.

Once you remove these you have descended to the level of a Dictatorship be that something like Nepal which is harmless or at the other extreme that Organisation led by Ossama who tells his followers what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

If it’s perfectly fine to be fighting a [b]War on Terror[/b] why then do you attempt to impose the very same things on your fellow citizens that you are saying is bad in the ones that you are fighting?

You’re perfectly right on the surface there is no connection but once you drop that right to [b]Freedom[/b] the other rights will soon follow and you’ll end up living in the very thing that you are attempting to destroy. It would be like destroying Al-quadia and voting in Ossama as President you would win the battle but loose the war.

While that may be acceptable to you it’s unacceptable to me.

Col

Simple

In reply to The thread is titled User Wants Porn

freedom from religious nuts who don’t like porn

ROTFLMAO.

forget the title TUFOP

In reply to The thread is titled User Wants Porn

This thread isn’t about porn, READ THE POSTS

Does this clarify matters?

http://tinyurl.com/o2mgf

Way too long and rambling…

In reply to I really feel sorry for you

My son who plays games on high end Power User Workstations gets almost as much junk on his computer as the Porn Surfers get and is constantly trying to stay on top of keeping the system clean and he’s never been near a Porn Site but the game sites are almost as bad and if you lack the knowledge to lock down a Windows Computer so that it remains usable for the bulk of the necessary transactions that it’s used for you are not providing the service that you are charging Professional Rates for Nor are you acting Professionally!

Something Shorter :D

In reply to Way too long and rambling…

[b]I’m Right Though![/b]

Incidentally my son is now 33 years old and drives me crazy because he sees computers as play toys. He likes killing Cops in NFS. :^0

Col

How about making a friends life easier?

In reply to Business/personal standards

Nice attitude towards others there. Do you also alienate people that don’t drink the same beer or use the same OS as you?

How about the cumulative effect of many tech savvy friends helping friends secure their PCs against intrusion and infection? When JD secures his friends machine, that is one less machine in the bot net sending spam to you and me. There is a direct benefit for you. Infintesimal surely, but if you help a friend that views porn, that is twice as good. I work to help my friends secure their own machines and I keep my own clean. At least from the malicious nasties out there, although your opinion may differ on the definition of clean here.

System lockdown?

In reply to User wants porn

I think that Firefox, or Mozilla.

But I’ve heard that the following three products are the best when run in conjunction with each other.

The anti-spyware software is all free. Download, install and regularly update and run all three of these at the same time. It’s the cocktail you
need on your Windows machine for the best defense against spyware:

AdAware (the personal version is fine, but feel free to upgrade)
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ – download it at http://downloads.com

SpyBot Search & Destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org/ – download it at http://downloads.com

Microsoft Windows Defender (formerly Giant, formerly Microsoft AntiSpyware)
http://microsoft.com/spyware

Info courtesy of http://onlinetonight.com/

Let him figure it out himself

In reply to User wants porn

There’s no way I would help him. You can bow out politely or come up with any excuse you can imagine, but I would not help him. If he accesses any number of illegal sites accidentally or on purpose he will almost certainly name you as an accessory. Do you have a couple extra thousand dollars for a lawyer? That could end up being a very expensive case of beer. Porn sites are notorious for identity theft and if this fate befalls him you can be sure he’ll be asking why you did not “protect” him better. This is a losing proposition. There are far more noble causes and uses for your time than this. If he’s so eager to wiew porn let him figure it out himself. After his PC is loaded with malware and his credit is ruined he’ll start thinking maybe there is a better way for him to spend his time also.

Exactly, but not just for those reasons…

In reply to Let him figure it out himself

After a couple times of helping him, I’d stop doing it. I don’t care if someone wants porn, but if they insist on “self-destructive” computing behavior, I’m not going to keep disinfecting them over and over again. It’s a waste of my time. Now, if your friend is willing to pay realistic hourly rates…SURF ON !!

That’s right, detective

In reply to Let him figure it out himself

It’s not my fault I was browsing illegally! He’s the one who installed the software that allowed me to access those sites. And my ISP is responsible too because they provided a network connection. But it’s not [b]my[/b] fault!

Puh-leeze!

And I forgot to wear my aluminum foil helmet and somebody else was controlling my fingers on the mouse!

You don’t know how right you are!

In reply to That’s right, detective

It’s all MS’s fault! :p

Col

You have……………….

In reply to User wants porn

told him to wear a condom, haven’t you? :))

Thank heaven MS don’t make condoms – it’d be like wearing a string vest on your joystick.

Charge the going rate, or let him do it himself.

In reply to User wants porn

After a couple times of helping him, I’d stop doing it. I don’t care if someone wants porn, but if they insist on “self-destructive” computing behavior, I’m not going to keep disinfecting them over and over again. It’s a waste of my time. Now, if your friend is willing to pay realistic hourly rates…SURF ON !!

Profesionals vs idjits

In reply to User wants porn

There have been some people coming up with some good ways to try to secure a windows box that you do not have control over.

We have also seen some that are above such things.

The ones that are above this discussion, is it because they are truly offended by the thought that anyone actually surfs porn?

Is it windows kool-aid drinkers that don’t want people discussing the fact of how wide open a windows box is, when doing nothing more than VIEWING a web site?

Of course that idea leads us to the next question, why is ANY system vulnerable to hackers, when all you are doing is viewing a web site?

Some have said to give the user a MAC. Not sure if that is the answer or not, but it seems more and more, having anyone on a windows box is NOT the solution.

Some have tried to derail the security aspects by trying to insinuate illegal activity, regardless of the complete lack of anything that would point to that. I wonder what it is that these people have going on in their lives that equates porn to illegal in their heads right off the bat.

For the people that actually participated in this discussion, you have given me many good ideas. Some after I get done learning on the users PC, will help me in my professional world.

Being a network guy, a lot of this is new, but the more I learn about security, the more interested in it I get. And they get all kinds of cool toys to play with! 😀

Thanks for your positive input.

so what tech solution did you use?

In reply to Profesionals vs idjits

?

None yet

In reply to so what tech solution did you use?

Like I said earlier in the discussion, I need to learn HOW to do the things suggested and THEN decide which to use.

This part will take me a few weeks. Don’t worry though, because I will start a new discussion talking about the solutions and why they were chosen.

i look forward

In reply to None yet

to following how you make out

Lets know how you get on JD

In reply to None yet

As you might come up with a solution that I can use as well. Personally I find it fairly counterproductive blowing away a HDD every week and cloning from an image.

Sure it’s easy money but also pointless and ultimately useless time wasted that I could better spend doing [b]Real Work.[/b]

When I’m blowing away his drive I give him my NB to play with and he’s yet to adversely affect it but it’s running Debian and while he refuses to accept anything but Windows he honestly doesn’t know that he’s using Linux when he plays with my NB. B-)

But I did say that he was completely Computer Illiterate.

Now if I was to feel the need to browse these sites I might have a better answer but I’ve noticed that even this unit hiding behind a Router and Nix Gateway still picks up about 19 infections a week and I only download price lists from my suppliers daily visit TR fairly regularly and a bit of browsing mostly linked to Computer Parts. It’s mostly all business work and I’m still picking up a small number weekly when I’m using any Windows Box. Shows that I don’t have a Life I suppose. 🙁

Anyway [b]Best of Luck[/b] and lets know how you get along.

Col

A point I have been TRYING to make here

In reply to Lets know how you get on JD

is that like you find with your windows system that is NOT used for a porn fest, STILL picks up infections regularly.

If a system can resist them on a porn or game hack site, then think what you could do for your work systems?

Of course it does annoy me to no end on how it has become simply accepted as “the way things are done” that if you buy a Windows system, you HAVE to go and get three third party products in order to TRY to keep it reasonably secure. How did we come to this that it is no longer MS’s fault or problem that we have viruses that can continue to attack a system after it has been fully patched? Hellooooooo?

OH don’t get me started on that one

In reply to A point I have been TRYING to make here

I’ll have all the MS Junkies jumping on me from great heights for being a [b]M$ Hater.[/b] 😀

Really I just hate how sloppy the code is and how vulnerable the entire system is. It’s way to easy to break, I wonder if I’ll get invited to any of the special Vista Programs this time after I broke 2003 within a few minutes. For some strange reason I’ve never been invited back since I did that at a security meeting held here by MS and one of their so called [b]Top Security People.[/b] :^0

Oh by the way I got confirmation today that MS is holding the Product Launch of Vista & Office 2007 here on the 8 November 2006, just the way that I want to spend my birthday at a MS Product Launch. 🙁

I’ll be way to exhausted by the end of the day to even want to have a few drinks when it’s all finished. It’s Unfair! :p

Col

Oh hateful one

In reply to OH don’t get me started on that one

That is another point I have been trying to make, but it gets lost in the translation I guess.

If you just complain that you don’t like something, sure, that is a ms hater/basher. (great fun, by the way! ;\ )

If you complain that MS should FIX their software and want to hold them accountable, that is exactly what EVERY MS head should be doing. They should want the kool-aid foutain to work properly all the time, not make excuses for it.

It is worse than talking politics with Oz! :0

Re: Possible Solutions:

In reply to None yet

I have been testing something for a similar problem (users hosing public-access PCs rather than porn, but similar issues). Microsoft has developed software for public-access PCs and kiosks called the MS Shared Computer Toolkit (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sharedaccess/default.mspx). Basically, you make a small partition, build the OS and install the software. It then takes a snapshot of the system, and resets to the last good state whenever the PC is rebooted. It can also be set to reboot (to known good state), then do Windows updates (and potentially any other approved updates), save a new snapshot, and then reboot again.

Hope this helps!

interesting

In reply to Re: Possible Solutions:

I will look at it.

Thanks.

Digiwiz live CD

In reply to Re: Possible Solutions:

How much does it differ in functionality from Win XP live CD compiled by Digiwiz? You are saved the trouble of taking & restoring snapshots.

Well Stop Slacking X-(

In reply to None yet

Get too it! And post a link to your new discussion in this one (please). :p

Title suggestions: “JD’s Guide to surfing porn as an administrator of a windows XP professional Box”.

or “JD’s Guide to Surfing Porn. Safe and Secure.”

or “Safe and Secure Porn surfing, a guide by JD”

or “My quest for safe porn surfing by JD”

or “The dummies and perverts guide to surfing porn safely on the net. by JD”

Please also add a reference to safe porn sites to surf on the net. 😉

more title ideas

In reply to Well Stop Slacking X-(

perverted dummies.
dummies guide to being a safe pervert?
surfing with a condom.

JD I’ve found it better

In reply to more title ideas

To put a Condom over the RJ45 Plug before plugging it into the Modem. That way you remain protected but a Surgical Glove works much better than a Condom as it’s stronger and less likely to suffer any damage. Well one of it’s fingers anyway as you don’t need any more. 😀

Col ]:)

rename, but

In reply to Well Stop Slacking X-(

As this thread is all about PC security, start a new thread, but leave the word “porn” out? That might stop all these id10ts from reacting to keywords.

On the other hand, it might not get so much attention.

hmmmm tricky choice there.

*** wink ***

Seriously though, another thread on what you have tried (or are considering) would be useful – this one is getting rather long and attracting the wrong responses.

(about that, I will -maybe someone else too? – use a test machine and try a few ideas out, I am already testing part of it)

final thought: If your user objects to Linux, then why not rename the distro “XXXsafesurf” or similar? This is easily done, as most open SW comes with the source code, a simple editor will do that job.

*** another wink ***

My siggestion

In reply to rename, but

How about WindoXXXp!!

Better be happy …

In reply to User wants porn

… that he didn’t ask your opinion on what kind of porn he should be safely surfing for 🙂

I wonder why this fellow is giving you such a hard time when you are merely trying to go above and beyond the call of duty in giving him browsing alternatives. I hope the money is worth all of this aggro.

In any event: first of all, install a proper antivirus program on his machine. Do a scan, clean out all the bad boys that have no doubt attached themselves to his machine. Next, install a good anti-spyware/malware program such Ad-Aware SE or Spybot Search and Destroy, and scan the machine again. (Also setting them to run automatically at Windows startup might not be such a bad idea — as long as this fellow is instructed to let the programs run to completion and not interrupt them.) Then, install a good firewall program on his machine: I reckon ZoneAlarm Pro to be one of the best out there.

Finally, he should get one of those USB flash drives and load it up with Portable Firefox, or, better yet, the recently-released Torpark (http://torpark.nfshost.com). He should be instructed to do his “extra-curricular” surfing using that instead: plug in the Torpark’d USB into the machine, change to the USB drive, run Torpark, and he can surf away.

Best of luck to you!

Get a backbone

In reply to User wants porn

So you don’t want to offend the shameless perv?
Don’t you even find his question offensive?
Just don’t go there.
Just spin yourself around on your heel and leave.
Or just tell him what you told us:
they didn’t teach you that in network school.

GROW UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In reply to Get a backbone

If they didn’t teach this in [b]Network School[/b] you went to the wrong School!

This is Basic [b]Desktop Security Plain & Simple[/b] and if you can’t get that through your thick skull you don’t have the right to call yourself a [b]Professional![/b]

Read something and learn

http://tinyurl.com/qukbx

Now for really [b]Stupid School Actions[/b] put in your 2 cents worth here

http://tinyurl.com/ro9fc

Incidently welcome to TR [b]Ossama.[/b] :p

Unlike you most Professionals don’t try to push our personal beliefs onto others but if you’re happy doing this you’re welcome even if you don’t have a job for long which just makes it that much easier for the rest of us who work as [b]Real Professionals![/b]

Col

HAL: I’m really enjoying…

In reply to GROW UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m really enjoying watching you here. You’re in your “blind” with your high-powered “rifle” and picking off these idjits one-by-one as they make their posts here at the end! :^0 :^0 :^0

Blam! Blam! Blam!

What can I say I had the JW’s visit recently. :(

In reply to HAL: I’m really enjoying…

I thought that I’d got rid of them about 5 years ago when I asked them to attend my church and I would go to theres if they allowed me to sacrifice the little girl that they had brought with them. :^0

Well that worked for about 5 years now I’ve got to come up with something a bit more extreme. 🙁

Col ]:)

Very funny!

In reply to What can I say I had the JW’s visit recently. :(

That was very funny! Thanks for a great laugh! :^0

.

In reply to What can I say I had the JW’s visit recently. :(

.

silly me

In reply to .

And here all I did was tell them that I really wasn’t interested, but thanks anyways, and they would walk right by on their rounds the next time.

All the fun I missed out on…..

.

In reply to silly me

.

Best JW defense

In reply to .

A military uniform. They came calling one day when I was on active duty and home for lunch. I answered the door in uniform and they went away. Lived there for five more years and never saw them again.

Second best defense. Keep all the religious tracts ever passed to you. Pass to JWs. Keep passing until they leave. Make sure they don’t leave with your “prophecies.”

A near permanent fix, at least in SC, is posting a sign reading “No soliciting or witnessing.” We’ve not been bothered at all, although we’ve had people walk to the door, see the sign, and turn around and walk away.

They hit me on the wrong day once

In reply to Best JW defense

I had Black Sabbath playing at Audio Assault levels and I think that when I opened the door [b]War Pigs[/b] was playing.

But I loved the expression on their faces when I suggested that I would come to their church if they came to mine that Friday Night and I asked could I sacrifice the little girl that they where dragging along with them. Satan Worshippers tend to make them stay away in droves. :^0

I could never understand why that is but it worked for about 5 years. This time they sent 2 adults to try to convert or should that read Pervert me? I just pointed out that as they where too old neither would be a Virgin so neither of them would make a suitable sacrifice the oldest one may have been about 21. But I did ask them could they provide a [b]Virgin[/b] female preferably but at such short notice a male would do as I needed some [b]Blood & Bone[/b] fertiliser for my garden after the sacrifice. [b]Waste not want not.[/b] You need something to help the weeds grow after I continually use [b]Chemical Warfare[/b] on them. 😀

Not only do I have a steep driveway up to the house but it’s anything but smooth and I just loved the way that they beat a hasty retreat through the [b]Obstacle Course[/b] that I had laid out in the driveway. 🙂

Hitting them with the water pistol would have been a waste of perfectly good Ammo and making them a funny colour and smelling of lemon would only have enhanced their reputation at their Church so I stepped away from that one but I did point out that the [b]Super Soaker[/b] was there when they asked why the concrete was Red, Blue and Yellow. 😛

Col [i]Insert Angelic Emotion Here[/i]

Judge not lest ye be judged !

In reply to Get a backbone

Too late. If you can’t you say anything useful, don’t say anything!

There was no horns of a moral dilemma stuff in the question. It was a technical problem in a technical forum, so technically you are wrong.

Serious Problem

In reply to User wants porn

Although this seems somewhat humorous on the surface, jdclyde’s problem is actually a serious business problem.

Does this user use his home computers to telecommute or otherwise attach to or exchange data with the office network – even just via email? If so, then the security of his home machines is very much to the point.

In my shop, we use citrix metaframe for remote connectivity. I tell our users the way to think of it is that when they’re connected to the office network, their machine is defacto a part of the office network, and so it had better be secured. Either that or don’t use it to touch our network in any way.

We don’t, however, directly support home machines. There aren’t enough of us, and there aren’t enough hours in the day, and life is just too short. We instead handle it by policy – we tell the users what our expectations are for security on p.c.’s used for telecommuting (minimum requirements are personal firewall software, AV, antispyware, OS and app patches up to date; and, hopefully, a hardware cable router/firewall device), and make it clear that if there is breach due to failure to comply, the person will be fired. We point them to free offerings in all these categories (which is why the hardware device is not a requirement, since they are not free), offer advice and post resources for securing home machines on our intranet. We make them sign an acknowledgement that they have read our IT policy, which includes the home security requirements, and will comply. We also forbid storing any work related files on personally owned devices of any kind, or indeed even on local drives on office owned p.c.’s. All data must reside on office servers, and telecommuting is to occur only through citrix, which offers a pretty good “graphical firewall” to block malware on the p.c.

That’s the best we can do with our resources. But, none of this will help if a user picks up a keylogger trojan while surfing his (almost always a “he”) porn. And that’s what keeps me worried. Perimeter security doesn’t worry me, server configs don’t worry me, the stuff I can control inside the office doesn’t worry me – it’s the things out of my control, like the home user surfing seedy parts of the web, that raise my blood pressure.

In any case, it is a serious and valid business concern, and anyone who suggests refusing to do anything for home users, or walking off in a huff because they’re offended by porn (which, let’s face it, is a huge business that millions of Americans indulge in) has a tremendous blind spot in regard to their obligations to their employer.

Good luck, jdclyde – it’s a dicey business.

Food for thought about supporting home pc’s

In reply to Serious Problem

(First of all, the computer in question is strictly personal use.)

[b]Supporting home pc’s.[/b]
I had this discussion with my boss when we first started to get remote access to the network.

We came to the decision it would cost the company more if there was a breach than what it would cost to do basic support of home systems.

When people are cleared to get remote access, they MUST bring their system in to me. They will get it back in a day or two.

First thing I do is scan for trojans/virus/malware/loggers and so fourth.

Then I apply all critical updates. [i](Many are just getting a cable modem for the first time, and so never updated over their dialup connection before.)[/i]

I install AVG, adaware, and zonealarm to replace the years ago expired version of whatever that came with the system. (you need to pay for that every year? You need to UPDATE the Anti-Virus?)

THEN they get setup for remote access.

Most of these processes only take a competent tech a few minutes at a time to start a scan and then walk away. Actual hands-on time is very low.

This starts the users with a secure and stable system, with the means to keep it that way.

This also creates a lot of good will with the employees. They feel better about a company that will do that extra bit for them.

We feel this investment of time is well worth it. What would it cost YOU if you have a major breach? Is that emplyee the only one that will lose their job when everything is said and done? I doubt it, because they are not the ones paid to protect the data, you and your boss are.

I do understand why many companies choose your route over mine, bottom line NOW. People need to think of the big picture.

Good luck, and hope you never have to find out the “what if”. You MIGHT want to mention this as food for thought to your boss though.

NOTE: I work for a private, family business. Things are a bit looser than in a major corp.

Food for thought about supporting home pc’s

In reply to Food for thought about supporting home pc’s

It’s just not feasible to do what you suggest if we also want to get our inhouse work done, and even if it were, the only thing you know for sure is that the machine is clean when you give it back to them. Once it’s in their home again, you have no idea if it’s being kept up to date, or what their kid might be downloading to it, what kind of sites they’re surfing to, etc. So you’re expending a lot of effort for little return.

The preferred solution would be to disallow telecommuting except on company issued equipment – i.e. you use one of our laptops, or you don’t telecommute, and that is our direction. We’re already there with 2/3 of our staff, who are road warriors who have employer-assigned laptops. For the remaining 1/3, who are currently desktop users, the next step will be to replace their desktops with laptops at the next purchase. Then we can mandate company-owned equipment only.

But, using Citrix as a remote access solution, the risk is fairly low, except for things like keyloggers. No data are exchanged during a citrix session, unless the user deliberately chooses to upload or download a file (which, in our environment, there is no reason to do, since we forbid work related files on local machines). Citrix sessions only exchange screen updates, mouse movements and keyboard activity – no data. Even if they’re infected with a virus, it won’t spread to the server.

FWIW, we’ve had zero security breaches in 14 years, and not even a virus in the past 6 or 7 years, so I think it’s fair to say our approach works well. Always room for improvement, though, and thanks for your thoughts.

Locked down laptops is best

In reply to Food for thought about supporting home pc’s

But only if you can lock them down and monitor them remotely. Otherwise you run into the same issue of “what else are they doing with it?”

There are some cool packages out there that can lock the user down pretty tight.

Hope I didn’t jinx your success….. ;\

Spyware Blaster

In reply to User wants porn

In addition to the other good suggestions here use Spyware Blaster. Use Firefox and lock down IE as tight as you can but if your friend does use IE for something it may not work or display pages properly with being locked down so tight.

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In reply to User wants porn

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Partition Magic!

In reply to Edited out

My first encounter with Partition magic was for OS/2. Unless you are working exclusively in windows environment DO NOT allow it to fix absolutely any error it may find. I allowed it to do so under version 5.0 & learnt the hard way. It wiped out my partition containing my most critical accpounting information which had not beedn backed up. I lost all data & lost a substantial amount of money as a consequence. Of course this was quite a few years ago. Since then I learned a lot about undeleting partitions & all available methods for retrieving data.

Then I read about MBRWork & BootitNG. Experimented with it & was so impresses I bought a license. Probably the best $35/= investment I have made. It has saved me a lot of grief as also for my clients.

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In reply to Partition Magic!

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A different approach

In reply to User wants porn

I think…I haven’t read all the other posts, but my experience is that there’s only so much you can do to secure a system. If the user is going to engage in this kind of dangerous browsing behavior, it’s going to happen no matter how hard you try to secure his system.

I would recommend doing the best you can with antivirus and antispyware software loaded on the system, set to auto-protect mode and auto-updating on a daily basis. Also, make sure his systems are set for automatic windows update so that he is assured of getting the latest security patches. Probably using an alternative browser like Firefox or Deepnet would be a good idea too.

The other thing I would suggest is more of a “how to fix it quick when it gets f-ed up” – get a copy of Symantec Ghost. When you’ve got both machines all cleaned up and pretty, make a ghost copy of each of them. Then, when his systems get badly infected again, all you need to do is wipe and re-ghost them and he’s off and…well…we’ll call it “browsing” to be polite 😉

and what still amazes me

In reply to A different approach

is how people just ACCEPT that you can not secure a windows box, and this discussion seems to prove it.

Thanks for the ideas, and the politeness. 😀

NMJ, and you’re welcome

In reply to and what still amazes me

I’m a firm believer that it’s not my job to police other people’s morals. I personally think the folks in this thread who are getting all bent out of shape because a grown man wants to be able to browse porn sites in his own home should get a life.

And, since you already said he won’t go with another OS, you are stuck with what can be done with Windows. I refuse to complain too much about Windows, anyway, since it’s made me a whole bunch of money over the years… :-O

I have been holding back

In reply to and what still amazes me

For several years, I have surfed so called “dangerous” sites, porn, game cracks, other warez (just out of profesional curiosity)

and never got any malware, virus, spyware etc creep through. I have a small home network using multi OS with basic protection (NAV, S&D SpyBl, NPF)

I am wondering if the nasties only target US macines, and leave small systems in a remote village in SW Scotland all alone…

😉

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In reply to I have been holding back

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User education is important

In reply to Edited out

I agree with NeverBusted and Kiltie that a big part of safety is user education. Also a good popup blocker, such as Google Toolbar (in addition to the Windows blocker) goes a long way to prevent a lot of the driveby downloads, that often use popups designed to get users to click on them (“your computer may be at risk!!”) and give them permission to download malware.

Other than that, and the use of good ad-ware and anitvirus software, the only way I know of to keep a system secure and still allow surfing unsafe sites is to use a clean image or something like DeepFreeze.

No, Kiltie. They don’t just target U.S. machines…

In reply to I have been holding back

No, Kiltie. They don’t just target U.S. machines. They actually give special treatment to small villages in SW Scotland. For those special people, they plant the malware soooo deeep that it is never found. But, there it is. Lurking. Waiting for the right time to strike! ]:) ]:) ]:)

Whoo whoo whoo whaa whaa whaa!! ]:)

You’re not there, are you?! ]:)

Sleep well…

P.S. What?! What did I just say? Must be Halloween coming… And, I’ve been off my meds… :^0

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In reply to No, Kiltie. They don’t just target U.S. machines…

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Give us a chance to catch up

In reply to Edited out

We only got electricty a few years back, then telephone lines
(wouldn’t work, when the dam sheep keep using them instead of the Gym)

Took us a while to get broadband

and then!!! we had to find summat called computerz to use it.

Right now, I am educating the local population (both of them) out of DOS and Win 3.1

Takes time, you know for us in the backwoods…

Why would you want to do that?

In reply to Give us a chance to catch up

…[i]educating the local population…out of DOS and Win 3.1[/i]

Safest porn browsing there is. IE 3, no Java, no ActiveX, no viruses, no spyware, no pictures, no…never mind. ;\

No Need for VM…

In reply to User wants porn

Just sandbox the browser…any browser:

Altiris SVS

You can create a virtual app such as the browser. Much faster, easier than an entire new virtual PC.

BTW…free for personal use.

You’d better be getting paid for it.

In reply to User wants porn

First visit and set up for a ‘friend’ is a freebie.
If you’re making successive visits to clean up crap that he won’t take your advice to prevent, it’s time to start charging either cash or barter for your time and effort.

You only have 683,748 hours to live from the time you’re born to death at an average of 78 years. You’re going to spend roughly 227,916 hours sleeping, leaving you only 455,832 hours to actually use. So I suggest you use what hours you have left wisely. The clock is ticking.

Okay, so he’s a client.,..

In reply to User wants porn

This guy hires you, the expert, to give him advice. He doesn’t like the advice and wants you to cobble something else for him. He IS going to have problems and you WILL get the blame. It’s up to you to decide how much this account is worth.

Him: “I want to go to Typhus, the capital of Bacteria, and drink the water.”

You: “Use halazone tabs.”

Him: “Nope. Makes the water taste funny.”

You: “Put two drops of bleach in each gallon and let it sit half an hour.”

Him: “Nope. Takes too long.”

You: “Okay, boil the water before you drink it.”

Him: “Nope. Too much trouble.”

You: “Use a ceramic microfilter.”

Him: “Nope. Too expensive.”

At this point I’d be saying, “You’re on your own, Bub.”

Legal Issue

In reply to User wants porn

I don’t have to be an IT guru to smell a legal problem here. Use of corporate equipment for private use is unethical and bordering on illegal. All you need to do is threaten to turn the lawyers loose on this person and you will see cooperation that you have not seen before. Even if he is the owner he knows it is wrong. Lock him down!

Not at all

In reply to Legal Issue

The first sentence of the first post in the thread stated it clearly:

[i]Got a home user, using his personal computer from his house, using his personal internet connection.[/i]

You weren’t paying attention

Read the post

In reply to Legal Issue

As Nick reminds you, it is a personal computer with personal use of his own private internet connection.

The 2nd para also says:

[b][i]Nothing he is using or doing is work related[/i][/b]

Just ghost it

In reply to User wants porn

A buddy of mine was into porn and the problem was that some porn sites require you to download special viewers and other spyware laden nonsense. Kind of makes you wonder if they are really dedicated to their “art” or if they just use the porn to get stuff on to your system.

Anyhow, the ultimate solution was to put the OS together with the various updates and favorite utilities and then use Norton Ghost (or Acronis backup) to make a recover disk image. I even went so far as to set him up with a removeable drive.

This way, he can do whatever dirty thing he wants and pick up whatever nastiness he wants and when he finally gets to the point where his system is diseased beyond repair he need only swap drives or recover from the bootable CD image and his drive is “virgin” all over again.

-Dan

You may want to check your state laws……..

In reply to User wants porn

as you may be party to a felony. In todays litigous (sp) atmosphere you could be liable for his actions by assisting this person. Just thinking out loud so to speak.

You are guilty

In reply to You may want to check your state laws……..

of making some bad assumptions.

No where does it say in the original post that the user wants to do anything illegal. You may find porn distasteful, but thats far from illegal.

I guess you think we should lock up all the convenience store owners that sell playboy and penthouse too. You better lock me up cause I worked in a 7-11 once.

James

WHERE do these nutcases keep coming from?

In reply to You are guilty

It is amazing how many people “work” in the IT field, yet have no reading comprehension skills.

Kong isn’t the first, and unfortunately, won’t be the last twit too lazy to read a discussion before posting in it.

And the worst part, he doesn’t even have the excuse of being a new member that doesn’t know better. Anyone that is a member of a site for six years should have learned how to do that whole “reading” thing long ago!

To the dumb, stupid, and lazy, instead of showing the world that your a moron, go back to your game of solitaire.

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In reply to You are guilty

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PUT THE MAGAZINE ON THE DECK AND TAKE TWO STEPS BACK!!! X-(

In reply to Edited out

YOU just mentioned Playboy and Penthouse, slimeball!

Oops, I just did too…

Down on your stomach with your arms out straight

Oh crap!

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In reply to PUT THE MAGAZINE ON THE DECK AND TAKE TWO STEPS BACK!!! X-(

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Actually EnBee

In reply to Edited out

it sounds like he already GOT “backup”! :0

[i]or was that “up back?”

(not that I am judging or anything)

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In reply to Edited out

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Now come clean NB :^0 :D :p

In reply to Edited out

You only ever looked at those Mags when the shelves needed restocking didn’t you? :^0 :^0 :^0 :^0 :^0

Oh that’s right you only looked at them for the in depth articles and never looked at any of the pictures either. 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

I’m so glad that DM told me all about those evil vile magazines as I’ve never heard of them previously. Just shows how many member that the Impure Brigade actually has doesn’t it. :p

Col ]:)

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In reply to Now come clean NB :^0 :D :p

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Well I was trying to be polite :p

In reply to Now come clean NB :^0 :D :p

I didn’t want to say that you where just [b]Drooling Over the Pictures or Worse[/b] :0 and that that particular 7/11 went broke because they had all of these Penthouse & Playboy Mags that they couldn’t sell or return. 😀

Col [i]Insert Angelic Emotion here[/i]

Or another way to look at it is

In reply to You may want to check your state laws……..

If you don’t lock the machine down tight enough he may sue you for stopping him browsing his favourite Porn Sites.

And because the computer is full of Male Ware you are guilty of not setting it up properly.

Two counts of unprofessional conduct that will send you to the bankruptcy court without a second chance of any argument as by not doing as the customer asks you are doing the wrong thing that there is [b]No Defence Against.[/b]

Just another way of looking at things from a [b]Purely Legal Prospective.[/b] After all if you don’t do the job properly shouldn’t you be held accountable unless you are Microsoft?

Col

LMAO Col

In reply to Or another way to look at it is

[i]After all if you don’t do the job properly shouldn’t you be held accountable unless you are Microsoft?[/i]

They not only are above the Law, they choose in which country they want laws to apply. They are [u]Supra[/u]national.
Besides, they can make their own laws, and simply call them EULAs

GOD it must be pick on Col day today :(

In reply to LMAO Col

I’ve already had a barrister wanting me to push MS into Court over the EULA on XP Pro as they say it specifically states that it can be used on 2 CPU’s. They are taking that to mean that it can be installed on 2 single processor computers and to them a single processor can be a Dual Core with HTT. X-(

Naturally they want me to supply them with the computers setup that way and just supply 1 OEM piece of software for every 2 computers sold to them. I just gave them MS Legal Departments Phone Number and the name of the head of it to speak to. That should keep the MS Legal Department in AU tied up for about 5 years and I’ll not have them poking their noses into my business. 😀

Better still it will keep those Barristers off my back as well. Honestly the Legal People are nearly as bad as the Bureaucrats to deal with the difference is that they tell you what the law is under their interpretation and expect you to just agree with them. The Bureaucrats just tell you what to do and then complain when it doesn’t work. 😀

And they wonder why I’m currently not doing any Government or Medical work I’m about to add Legal work to that list in the not to distant future as well. :^0

Col

I won’t pick on you..

In reply to GOD it must be pick on Col day today :(

I promise. 🙂

Now I’m worried Mae.

In reply to I won’t pick on you..

:p

SandBoxIE

In reply to User wants porn

I like all the other posts. Another thing to add ontop of all the normal protection might be SandBoxIE

http://www.sandboxie.com/

A friend was demoing it at a computer meeting.

dlauer

.

In reply to SandBoxIE

.

WBT

In reply to User wants porn

We sell these devices called Windows based terminals. They have an OS burned onto a Card or ROM. Some of the older ones are Win NT 4.0 or newer are linux. They don’t have a HD. You can’t write anything to them. but they have a browser and can get an IP through DHCP.

Pretty darn secure.

James

Firefox — with NoScript

In reply to User wants porn

The NoScript extension will keep him safe from unannounced Javascripts. Of course, he needs a good firewall and a pop-up blocker and Ad-Aware and Spybot (yeah, I know, supposedly the same focus — but both miss things.) If he won’t use his tools and keep them up to date, he’s beyond help — as we’re all aware. Nothing beats ignorance and laziness for keeping us employed…

Also worth considering…

In reply to User wants porn

Turn on all pop-up blockers; install ad blockers like Spybot S&D, AdAware; virus protection like McAfee and Norton (virus protection ONLY).

Some of this may have been mentioned in other posts and I probably missed it but I bet this hasn’t:

Next time you go over to his house, wear a hazmat suit.

cheap, easy, and no complaints

In reply to User wants porn

tell ya user to get a sheep. they will keep ya grass trimmed, wool for winter use, and they don’t laugh at ya or talk about ya, to other sheep…LMSAO…

After falling in the floor from laughing so hard

In reply to cheap, easy, and no complaints

I pick myself up, slide back into my computer chair, and fall out again LMMFAO, wool in the winter, dont talk about ya to other sheep, OMG make it stop, Please make it stop!!!

It is always great

In reply to cheap, easy, and no complaints

when people step up and share what works for them.

It is caring and sharing like this that makes TechRepublic great!

Thanks.

Is there any other hints on how to please your sheep that you have found to work best? :p

B-)

There is something that

In reply to It is always great

people really need to keep in mind when dealing with sheep.. ‘Baaaaa’ means ‘No’.

Now Showing, “Deep In Wool”

In reply to There is something that

You folks are sooooooo damn geeky.

Hap
Out Of The Inner Circle
Medion Puters are Better

Perhaps…

In reply to Now Showing, “Deep In Wool”

but we’re also soooo damn hot..things even out.

Alfalfa hay from Nov to Mar

In reply to It is always great

Keeps ’em from losing too much weight in the winter. Makes’em smell better too! ;\

As Lou Costello used to say “I’m such a bad boy!”
:^0

Where is the resolution

In reply to User wants porn

solution???

delayed

In reply to Where is the resolution

I have been having to spend most of my time replacing equipment that burned up after a few power outages. no, everything is not protected by surge protectors. at least I have been able to get rid of some old hubs and get some new switches in place! 😀

Then I have a server update I get the joy of playing with, from a vendor that has yet to provide me with software and instructions that work the first time and end up having to send me custom files to get the damn system going. X-(

Soon my friend, soon….:D

Foolproof solution

In reply to delayed

Get a wyse thin client. Burn OS/Browser. Don’t put email clients etc. on it. Or anything else that talks to anything. Firewall it so it sees nothing else in his house. Also a nice big screen…..ok ok

All he has to do is power it off. When you turn it back on, it reloads from ROM. If he wants upgrades, he has to create a new image (on another machine) and download it.

Its completely safe and reliable.

Tell him no!

In reply to User wants porn

Pure sin!

How do you go about

In reply to Tell him no!

getting diluted sin? In the pure form it can be a little much, so a mixer is sometimes called for. :0

Heh, That Is Funny

In reply to How do you go about

diluted sin… Never had that type of response before!

I get that way

In reply to Heh, That Is Funny

most people learn to just ignore me in hopes that I will go away…… :0

Hasn’t worked yet.

Thanks for taking the response in the light hearted sense it was meant. B-)

Call HR ,Check company Policy

In reply to User wants porn

Does your company have an HR dept , if so check with them to see if you have a Company Policy on sexual harrasment , A company pc user agreement dealing with the proper use of company resources , proper internet usage on company PC hardware. We established a usage agreement years ago ,and while a VP can usualy slip out from under the consequence’s of violating the agreement , they have a harder time side stepping rules (feds involved here) in forcing an employee to deal with porn in a work environment.. If your company doesnt have proper usage policy dealing with porn on company hardware.. Now might be the time to start the fight , you have data security , time used to fix hacks and all the time ($) involved and dont forget to pitch the Sarbanes /Oxley implications of the data security issue

Read it again

In reply to Call HR ,Check company Policy

The original post says this is for a home user. No corporate policies involved.

it is the lazy techs that make everyone look bad

In reply to Read it again

as he was clearly too lazy to even read the original post.

Then stupidity kicked in to talk about something