Safe Computing For the Elderly? 143
wingspan asks: "My 80-year old mother is insisting on using this new fangled thing called the Internet for banking and brokerage. I researched ways for her to perform those activities safely. The typical suggestions, from organizations such as BITS [pdf], include installing anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam, anti-adware, browser toolbar, and a personal firewall. The suggestions also include not clicking on links, verifying security certificates (If it has a cert, it must be a good site!), making sure the address begins with 'https://' regularly updating the security software and patching all other software, and regularly changing passwords. Personally, I think the technical suggestions are too Windows-centric, too costly, and leave too much of an attack surface. The non-technical suggestions are simply too much to ask of the elderly. What do you think? Is it possible for an elderly person to safely perform Internet banking and brokerage? If so, what system should they have, how should it be configured and maintained, and how much of the security should depend with the elderly user?"
Get her on Linux (Score:4, Funny)
They hate the bootup sequence text and the weird program names, so they quit using computers altogether and get back to using ATMs.
This may or may not be what you are trying to accomplish with your grandma.
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deb http://silver.surfer.com/grandma/ [surfer.com] grandparents human
Then run your updates:
sudo apt-get update perspective-on-life
And finally, install the required old person packages (debian sarge includes a larger list, see here for more):
sudo apt-get install falseteeth slippers cardigan
Once you have done this, logout of your grandma and when you bring her back online she will be ready for action.
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It was going great until this line. I have to go wash my brain out with soap now.
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It was going great until this line. I have to go wash my brain out with soap now.
I was doing great with it - brain resisted horrible thoughts (*praises brain with beer*) until you pointed them out. I nearly fall off my chair laughing though.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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get back to using ATMs.
They feel comfortable with their average ATM because it runs Windows and bluescreens as often as their Internet banking does!
In all seriousness, Linux is a good way to keep old people out of trouble. They are scared of computers and all their "tech savvy" friends are scared of Linux. You can lock it down so they can't bollocks it and let em rip.
But there's no way to keep the elderly safe on computers. They (in general, I have seen one or two exceptions) aren't cluey enough i
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I know. People have died just trying to pronounce "Ubuntu".
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It says she has the wrong bank (Score:2)
Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Author needs to be whacked with a cane.
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> Author needs to be whacked with a cane.
As you get older you lose your mental faculties. That's not patronizing - it's what happens. Eventually - if you live long enough - you'll start to make bad decisions. It doesn't happen, or we shouldn't talk about it?
Getting back on topic, I guess you could provide a shortcut to a browser with no address bar, pointing to a homepage which is a local html file with links to the banking (etc) sites so that
Re:Sad (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes true, however I once had opportunity over several weeks to play a Monk in his late eighties at chess, a game at which I have some talent. I've never been so completelly destroyed in chess so many times in a row, his abilities were fearsome.
Yet he seemed absent minded, it was all very puzzling.
Re:Sad (Score:4, Interesting)
Your monk, then, may have just been very, very, experienced, in spite of his old age, and thus fearsome. Hell, look at Viktor Kortchnoi [wikipedia.org].
That said, though, I absolutely believe there are some very, very, sharp elderly men and women out there. As well as some very, very, strong ones, to dispel another myth. The key is using what you have -- intelligence, strength -- and never giving it a chance to slip into senility.
Re:Sad (Score:4, Interesting)
The Monk in question had been left at the monestary as a baby and raised there. Chess was, and remains, a major entertainment in that monestary. We're probably talking over 70 years of constant chess playing.
What struck me as odd at the time was that I didn't seem to be able to come up with a single long term strategy that he didn't block several moves before I got to a checkmate. I got a few checks, but usually before I realised something horrible was happening elsewhere on the board.
And when I am in my eighties... (Score:2)
And will I have done some brilliant bit of editing, killed a yeti, or totally lost it?
Yikes! I've been using "vi" for over half my life, and my life is probably half over!
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Unless you did, and just caught it before hitting 'submit' in which case you're probably screwed
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Hmmm (Score:2)
It's not clear you lose mental faculties; certain your body gets older. But the idea that people become senile as a normal part of aging is false.
As for old people making bad decisions, so does everyone. And if I was betting, I'm betting that 21 year olds make more bad decisions than 80 year olds.
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Agreed. It seems to be a "use it or lose" proposition. Old people who stay mentally and physically active -- particularly when the activities include learning new things -- tend to live longer and be less susceptible to diminished memory and reasoning capacity.
On a related note, I'm very concerned for the younger generations. Many amoung them seem to be suffering diminished physical and mental capacity already due to inactivity.
We need... (Score:2)
We need to make tea kettles more available. Basically a tea kettle with a heating element that shuts off when the water boils.
I had never heard of them until about 25 years ago when I was visiting England and every B&B had one in the room. The best part is that its very energy efficient and when it's done it shuts off so the danger is mainly from scalding.
I found some about 15 years ago made by Kenwood (!),
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My mother was a brillant woman who did the accounts for an insurance form with pen and paper. She used a computer at work when she had to, so she knew the basics. Then she retired and I told her to get a computer to stay in touch and shop from home. A year later I visited and that computer was an unholy mess, infested wit
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Author needs to be whacked with a cane.
Oh dear God, no!
My grandmother/grandfather both have a hard time in simply shutting down Windows properly. Even after adding 5 icons all lined up on one side of the screen that are labeled 'SHUT DOWN THE COMPUTER'. This after I sat with them for the better part of the day trying to explain how to connect to the internet (setup behind a router, there is no 'connect' icon, just double click FireFox) and how to reply to
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Frankly most people are a security risk on the Internet. Being young doesn't mean you are not an idiot.
Elderly people can't figure out the Internet.
African Americans are criminals.
Hispanics are illegal aliens.
Jews are cheap.
Christians are intolerant.
Muslims are terrorists.
All great examples of prejudice.
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I guess it depends on the elderly in question and their track record with such things.
In my case, my father (late 60's) has always been a complete idiot when it came to technology. He can weld and use any tool like nobody's business, but remote controls and setting time on digital watches elude him (I kid you not, he owns two identical digital watches, one for Daylight Savings Time and one for Standard time.)
He keep
Safe is safe enough. (Score:2)
Odds of more exotic attacks are slim enough to be ignored for every day users and really isn't a conc
Re:Safe is safe enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Also, let them know tha
Teach, and encourage. (Score:2)
I think the key here is to teach all the important basics about not clicking on links in emails, but also try to design the system so that it re
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Only open banking sites from bookmarks, never links!
Bookmarks good, links bad?
Meeeeeh! [wikipedia.org]Never used a computer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise, considering going Apple. Sure some will decry the proprietary aspects, but it's an *easy* system to use, and with Applecare she will have a years worth of tech support from someone who is inside the US of A if you're not availabe.
My 76 yo Mom has a Powerbook for her internet related stuff, and a Winbook, because she was a long time Windows user and her embroidery stuff runs only on Windows (it's tied to a Bernina, who offers no Mac port of their software).
I think if she hadn't been into the sewing thing we could have gone straight Mac. She understands too, that if she needs to go on the internet for any reason with the WB, she uses "that other account you set up for me" (i.e. non-Admin), cause it's safer.
FWIW, the PB has been just fine for 3 years, the WB has had problems within 3 months of purchase, YMMV.
Good luck, whatever you do.
Mac may not be the way to go (Score:2)
If the person in question is really, completely, clueless at computers, an Xubuntu box is the way to go.
Think about it: the person is so clueless that they won't use the menus; you make a shortcut on the desktop to Firefox, and rename it to "Go Online", another shortcut to Writer, and that's about it.
This has one great advantage over a mini: cost! Grab your old P3 from the basement, dust off the 128 megs
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Linux does a fine job. The doc menu or the desktop are just different ways of accomplishing the same thing, and a few seconds of configing my Ubuntu desktop, and I can enlarge icons/test.
Last time I checked, Mac allowed a user to delete their own files, which is really the worst you can do in Linux without being root
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My mum's got a Mini, and is totally happy with it (and has now converted my Dad, a longtime Wintel user).
When she first got it, though, she spent a lot of time on the phone to the Mac shop (and me). The Mac people were totally understanding and patient with her, never told her to just ring Apple, and now she's doing great.
However, there are two main Mac outfits in our little town, and the other one* is staffe
Ubuntu + Explanations about phising (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ubuntu + Explanations about phising (Score:4, Informative)
She wants to use it for banking. Banking sites are often designed for IE and nothing else. Maybe Firefox will work, but that's not guaranteed.
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That's true, but I won't use those "services", and I've taken my banking elsewhere, and I let them know why. Banks _hate_ to lose customers.
Sure, you can think "fuck him, he's an elitist asshole linux hippie", but it's got to start somewhere.
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You're kidding aren't you? Banks in USA only allow withdrawals in their own ATMs? Here in Sweden I can go to any ATM, no need to worry about which bank owns it...
ATM fees (Score:2)
They do, but generally, there is a $4 surcharge when a customer from one bank withdraws from another bank's ATM, split evenly between the two banks. In addition, banks in USA only allow deposits of cash or checks in their own ATMs.
Is there actually a law forbidding ATM owners from charging service fees to customers of other banks?
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No fee. And there isn't any deposit problem really - unless you're a company you usually don't get a lot of cash. Companies have special deposit boxes at their bank office.
Is there actually a law forbidding ATM owners from charging service fees to customers of other banks?
No, AFAI
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In cash to the recipient directly instead of via a machine? No need to overengineer things...
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So when you pay the neighbor to mow your lawn, do you use direct deposit? If so, then it must be much easier for individuals to use direct deposit in Europe than in North America. Please explain.
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So, run IE on Linux for banking, FF for the rest (Score:2)
IE runs pretty darn well under Wine, along with most of the ActiveX controls and other nonsense the banks seem to want. However, it tends not to run the illegitimate malware crap.
Set her up with Firefox for general internet and IE for specific banking stuff.
One word: (Score:1)
I bought a MacBook for my mother's birthday. She has never had any problem whatsoever and this is the first time she uses Mac OS X. My brother has bought her a Windows laptop (Toshiba) before but it was too hard to teach her the security expertise required to safely operate it connected to the Internet. Needless to say we decided to do what Slashdotters advised us to do - that is buy her a new Linux notebook (Assus). Well, let's just say that we had to find something else *cough*copyandpaste
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Windows hates the elderly (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah. "Windows" is the problem. (Score:3, Interesting)
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That is probably the best advice that you can offer someone. Most people are so worried about breaking it that they won't do anything to it. Explaining that it's always fixable goes a long way to improving anyone's ability.
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Three small steps (Score:2)
If she can figure out how to make her URLs clickable again, she's probably smart enough to learn about secure surfing. If not, at least she's less likely to be phished.
One Laptop Per Granny? (Score:2)
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what about training / courses ? (Score:1)
Imho the idea that this ought to be simple and easy for everybody is false.
Time for a bad analogy.
If I want to drive a car on the highway, i first need to
- learn how to drive a car
- learn how to behave in traffic
Furthermore I need to have an understanding of what i'm doing in order to be able to predict the outcome of my actions.
Why is this accepted for driving a car, but not for computing and using internet? (It looks like a TV set, but
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Perhaps if there were fake road signs everywhere pointing people to fake banks your analogy would hold up.
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*excepting the exploding laptop batteries, but that's another story...
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what about training / courses
The University I studied at had just that twice a week for older people. They took a bunch of computer illiterate elderly people and churned out a bunch of computer illiterate elderly people who knew a bunch of Windowsy buzzwords. It's not that the course was bad or that the people in the course were stupid. It's that there's too much to learn. Computing isn't simple. Many of us on /. have grown up with computers and have been able to learn them at our own pace since we
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Licenses = regulation.
That would be doubleplus not good for internet.
Imagine what bureaucrats would do to our precious internet.
The Horror, the horror.
Not really about the elderly (Score:4, Insightful)
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i'll agree with the ac. we gave my grandmother our old webtv (my parents insisted their C64 was good enough until i bought a Win 3.1 computer at a garage sale in 1998), and after pretty much forcing her to try it, she started to like it. her kids always used email, and my uncle would print out the emails from a week and snail mail them to her.
she has alzheimers(sp) now, but she can still navigate it fairly well. she has a hard time with the handheld remote, but she can still use the keyboard fairly well.
iMac or Mac Mini (Score:3, Insightful)
Set the system up to auto-update.
If they have vision problems there are settings on the Mac to help.
You might consider getting an additional keypad - for instance you can get one from x-keys [ymouse.com] and set it up with all the things they normally want to do - opening and closing the web brower for instance, you could even set it up for different keys to open different sites. Then clearly label the keys.
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My wife's grandmother was put onto Windows before we could do anything about it and now she won't consider anything else so I recently donated my last PC to her (all Mac now!)
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You know that there are services like DynDNS [dyndns.org] that provide free domains? There are programs available to automatically update the domain when the ip changes. This way you could have something like grannyscomp.dyndns.org and it will always work.
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Isn't that... (Score:1)
linux embedded pacemaker.. (Score:1)
2 ways (Score:2)
(1) If you can get her a static IP address, get her a generic PC and install your favourite distribution of Linux. Customise it for her with a few simple desktop icons. Know the root password so you can login remotely and perform maintenance (or just eject the CD-ROM and scare the shit out of her -- I used to do that all the time in the office where I work).
(2) In all other cases, get her an Apple Mac.
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Cheers,
Roger
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my grandma uses wget (Score:1)
Oh, yes, once grandpa modified her hosts file, transfered funds from her savings account run away with his 20 something bride.
Just Install Ubuntu (Score:1)
Banking (Score:1)
Ofcourse unless your name if John Coyote Mutombwe Esq. and you are executing the will of their late oil baron long lost relative and need $45k to get the inheritance out of Nigeria.
Rote (Score:1)
Get her a mac. (Score:2)
Security Suggestions too Windows-centric? (Score:1)
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Seriously. If you honestly think that you don't need to worry about security because you have a Mac or you run Linux, seek help. You're too stupid to own a computer. The reason there aren't more than a handful of viruses that target Linux isn't because it's innately more secure, it's because it doesn't run on many desktops. Once it starts seeing a decent market share (and that's only a matter of time), you'll start seeing viru
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Don't get a Mac... yet (Score:2)
There's an easy fix for that.... (Score:3, Insightful)
But in all seriousness, not liking Safari is no reason not to get a Mac. Since I don't have 10.4 at home so I can't use the newest Safari anyhow (and old Safari really sucks) I use Firefox almost exclusively on my emac.
Safe from others, and safe from herself. (Score:2)
You will probably find a lot of information on the first kind of safety - this is what most tech people will talk about when speak
Visually impaired? (Score:2)
However! Apple has done a pretty good job of including such features, and honestly I think they might be better. She'll still need a
Warn about email scams. (Score:1)
It took me a long time to convince my parents that there is no child in Indonesia getting the money they DID send, that there is no one trying to escape to the United States needing their money and always check for the validity of charities asking for help.
Also, the identity thefts... well, you get the point. LOL
My dad is an educated man. He has a pharmacological degree and that took many years of college and he still fell
KISS (Score:2)
Bottom line, if she just wants to surf the internet, get her something that just surfs.
Wii Browser is Opera (Score:2)
Wii Browser is an Opera product, so it works on sites that Opera's Presto engine works on. And keep in mind the topic: Which site that a granny would visit would require a plug-in, other than possibly YouTube?
byzantineOS (Score:2)
ByzantineOS on Sourceforge [sf.net]
works with most computers with a lan connection.
PC's for Dummies (Score:2)
Ask hard question (Score:2)
To give a real Internet appliance, do a minimal install of Debian with Windowmaker. Large icons in top right for web, mail, word processor, maybe photo app. People with previous computer phobias react astonishingly well to this setup, comments like, of course I can use THAT
Elderly computing (Score:2)
You left off Privoxy (Score:2)
From the inside (Score:3, Interesting)
DONT USE WINDOWS
Simple really.
Seriously, for someone who wasn't weaned on Windows, using a modern Linux desktop is a very viable proposition. The only trojan attack vectors we've seen are from Windows boxes. A recent survey stated that 50% of all trojanned machines run Windows XP SP2, so there's no safety there. Most are simple key-loggers which are bad enough, but there's a new wave of targetted banking site trojans designed to crack various protection schemes.
Install Linux, Mandriva is a good newbies distro. Get broadband with a hardware router/firwall. Put big icons on the panel for e-mail, browser and OpenOffice. Put a signle Bookmark for teh Banking site on the browser toolbar. Lock down the KDE desktop using Kiosk. Install Spamassasin to cut down on the phishing e-mails. Sign them up with a bank that supports Firefox (there's plenty, we do) and has a form of 2nd Factor Authentication. A smaller bank will be less of a target, but they need to be big enough to have proper security in place.
Most importantly, patiently explain to them WHY they must only ever use the bookmark to access thier banking, never reply to e-mails or follow links on other sites. Don't assume they won't understand the background, just issuing blanket orders to not do something is guaranteed to confuse and be forgotten/ignored. Explain it to them in simple, non-technical language and use analogies to things tehy do understand. If they understand the why, they will be better prepared when they do see an attack vector you haven't explicitally told them about.
John.
P.S. And yes, I've done this for my parents...
Been there, done that... (Score:2)
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Mmmm? I did a demo for my user group when Dapper came out. I was ad-libbing, showing how to install software and discovered the accessibility tools. What I installed was the magnification utility. I can't tell you much about how good it is, but I know there is such a creature.
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This is particularly interesting now that I am weaning them off of AOL and onto gmail. Anything I can do to get rid of Windows is going to be good for all of us, and if I don't have to spend any more money on hardware (a mini isn't expensive, but the last few PCs I bought were still hundreds less) I would be ok with that :-).
Email and web news (Score:2)
Consider just starting her out with email and a web-based version of a newspaper or magazine that she's into. This will allow her to learn how to use the computer, and will allow you to gauge her vulnerabilities before she puts her money on the internet.
Another strategy is simple risk management. Assuming your grandmother has life savings that she doesn't touch often, keep that money off of the internet. You could start her off by only setting up a bank account that her weekly/monthly check goes into.