User wants porn

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.

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 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!

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.

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? :D

(party at jd's place!)

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! ;)

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.

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.

to following how you make out

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

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

deletedeletedeletedeletedeletedeletedeletedeletedeletedelete

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.

...

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

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 ...

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.

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 ]:)

It's a Nasty Job but Someone Has To Do It. :D

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

Col

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

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!

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..... ;\

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.

[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)

"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 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......

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!
:D

This thread isn't about porn, READ THE POSTS

Does this clarify matters?

http://tinyurl.com/o2mgf

.

Edited out

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. :D

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......

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

Col ]:)

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. :D

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. :P

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

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

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 ;-)

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. ;)

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.

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.

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."

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!

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)

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!

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

Edited out

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

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

...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! :)

:-(
:-( :-( :-(
:-( :-( :-( :-( :-(

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...unsupported flameout bastard...

...

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???

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. ]:)

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.

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?

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

that is the one!

If you would be ever so kind? :x

EnBee should even remember the one, as he posted the pics of the bathroom! :D (yes, from the outside...)

it is just HARD to keep them all straight?

:0 ;\ ]:) :D :p

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