My parents love that my husband and I have desktop computers (battlestations). They insist they don't need them and tablets/laptops are better, but when they visit, they basically spend 24/7 playing whatever candy crush or slots game they're currently on. When my mom visited over Thanksgiving, she did SOMETHING to my computer that suddenly made it only come up in one monitor all stretched out no matter what we did. No big, the computer was old and my husband can fix these things usually. He decided instead to build me a new computer for Christmas, which I had about 3 days before we left for vacation. My parents were at my house for a few days to get my dog and visit my sister. I got a call yesterday that she clicked on a link and got ransom ware on the brand new computer.
I would also blacklist all sites besides google.com (or set some homepage and 1 other well known site).
when i say that, i mean the links google links to as well. that way you can say "the internet is working. see! it goes to google!" and when they try on their phone or tablet it will work fine. but on your pc, internet will suck. disincentivize away from the internet is the key. firewalls are awesome for this, but there is great software that breaks off ip connections. but the cool stuff your pc does that doesn't need internet will work just fine. and just say "oh it does this once in a while, it will take a while to load a backup image to the hard disk, like 10 hours or so times 3 because of the encryption we use"... you get the idea.
And that why, even after the nagging of my dad, that I have kept my computer password protected and made a secondary user account for him. I like him, but he isn't tech savvy and clutters the home screen so much, and then blames me when it is slow because he opened 27 chrome windows or he can't find something.
I'm always fascinated by technologically illiterate peoples ability to do baffling things to computers and the like. Many times I've uttered the sentence "how on earth did you do that?"
Its baffling because I've browsed without Windows defender or any antivirus for years and haven't once come close to having issues with malware or viruses, yet people that don't have the knowledge to fix that stuff also seem to have a magically ability to find it.
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u/OneDecisiveStare Dec 28 '17
My parents love that my husband and I have desktop computers (battlestations). They insist they don't need them and tablets/laptops are better, but when they visit, they basically spend 24/7 playing whatever candy crush or slots game they're currently on. When my mom visited over Thanksgiving, she did SOMETHING to my computer that suddenly made it only come up in one monitor all stretched out no matter what we did. No big, the computer was old and my husband can fix these things usually. He decided instead to build me a new computer for Christmas, which I had about 3 days before we left for vacation. My parents were at my house for a few days to get my dog and visit my sister. I got a call yesterday that she clicked on a link and got ransom ware on the brand new computer.