Its always important that you make sure you wont get infected. If you have infected machine, in my opinion only thing to do is reinstall, you just can’t never be sure if the machine is clean or not after infection.

@ Alphast:

Yeah, I installed Avast on my Dad’s old computer. It was working great until they completely revamped the UI at which point it became resource hog. It made the venerable old machine quite sluggish, though on anything more modern it runs just find.

@ ST/op:

Yeah, I know – I’m preaching to the choir. :) But I figured it would be amusing, and I could point some n00bz at it if they ask me for help again. :)

@ Mart:

Actually my AV and Malwarebytes pipe in from time to time warning me about random infections.

I also caught one of these fake AV scams just by casual browsing about 2 weeks ago. I don’t even remember where I got it, but I believe it barged in via old version of Adobe Reader that I had on the system. So yeah – even if you know what you are doing, and are relatively careful you can still catch something quite easily.

@ icebrain:

Actually, I watched a video from last Defcon in which the some guys were showing how a lot of Android apps use a system-wide log file. And since anyone can read and write that file, you can slurp in logs that other apps left behind and search them for stuff like unique tokens, ID’s, etc… Unsurprisingly a lot of apps out there log everything, and in plain text which allowed them to pretty easily data scrape phones for personal information.

I can’t find the link right now. Anyone remembers that talk?

@ Mr.Pete:

My dad only started using computers like two years ago. He is running a machine with Avast and Malwarebytes and is yet to get infected. I guess it’s because I instilled some good habits in him – he is running Firefox, and I believe his windows is in User mode since he never installs anything without me anyways. :)

OK, you got a little smile outta me.
I know one person who doesn’t do anything to protect their machine.
My mother, and although she’s not using any software pack to safeguard her PC she’s got the ultimate solution: no internet :)
OK, bad example, most other folks are connected and you get the obligatory “what’cha talking about?” when you ask them for their anti-virus/malware…

ST/op wrote:

(…) they actually run some kind of *NIX OS (be it iOS or Android), which is probably why (at least for the time being) they are “immune” to malware.

Android actually runs each app as its own user, to prevent applications from reading or writing each others’ or the user’s files. Doing the same on GNU Linux or Windows is possible, but it would be too cumbersome since we’re used to having access to our /home from any program.

I haven’t installed any AV on my Windows 7 gaming PC for around 1-2 years now, and I have yet to get any virii or malware on it. Maybe it’s because I only turn it on once a day for an hour or so for my sporadic gaming sessions that are few and far between these days.

Or maybe there are already a bunch of love.exe’s and sexyladies.exe’s running that I am unaware of. Hmmm….

Er, how do I install Microsoft Security Essentials on Debian? :)

Joke aside, I don’t think you’re going nowhere with this kind of “how not to”!
Your readers already know – or don’t use Windows at all – and the intended target audience probably doesn’t read you, or would just ignore your advice if they did.
I think you’re right about the *pad thing: Many lusers do migrate to these platforms, not knowing that they actually run some kind of *NIX OS (be it iOS or Android), which is probably why (at least for the time being) they are “immune” to malware.

Anyways, it’s always fun to read your rants ;)

Yeah. I follow religiously your little steps at home and at work. I do it for my gf too, because she could not care less and we are on a local network, of course. By the way, for a decent anti-virus, I would recommend Avast. It works neatly, stops anything really nasty and is free or very cheap, depending on the version, while not slowing your computer to a halt or preventing you to play your favorite video RPG.