Inside job
It's easier to hack your computer directly from the keyboard than over the Internet. We've all observed
the suspension of good sense
that begins
inthe single or early double-digit
ages,
and sometimes never ends. A guest
with this
affliction can attract a whole
nest of computer
pests in a hurry. Often this
kind of guest
is very fluent with computers,
likes their
computers set up a certain way,
and just
can't resist doing a makeover
of the host's
computer. In a few hours things
are deleted,
others are rearranged, and the
host's desktop
is filled with exotic new goodies.
Some of these downloaded dainties probably
brought malware in with them. If they didn't,
visits to risky Web sites, file sharing,
instant messages or other risky behavior
no doubt did. Even if there's no malware,
the makeover will be hard to recover from.
You can set up restricted guest accounts
on Windows XP, and that will block most of
these changes, and you can do things like
restrict access to folders. You may not be
successful in blocking the malware though.
Up to date backups, including a fresh drive image are the only recovery plan I'd trust in
this situation.
|