How many fall for this crap...

[GTP]

 

[carmen617]

Many. I make a good living cleaning up after those who do.

 

[Philippe]

Even people who know, will fall for it from time to time. Given the right personalized text, the right time, the right amount of stress...

 

[nlinecomputers]

Even people who know, will fall for it from time to time. Given the right personalized text, the right time, the right amount of stress...

Or the right amount of beer. Years ago I stupidly opened a fake UPS tracking message. Fortunately my Antivirus was smarter than me….

 

[britechguy]

And what a blessing it would be if it were real, and ignored, and Norton were never seen again!

 

[Metanis]

My "most hated" AV products are McAfee, AVG, and Avast. Cleaning up failed Norton installations was big money earlier in my career but it's only a minor pita now.

 

[Sky-Knight]

That's because all of the above now don't actually do anything. They just sit back and let Defender do most of the lifting while they act as supplements. And as such, they don't have much of an impact on systems anymore.

Gone are the days of Windows being eaten alive because they tried to actually do stuff.

 

[phaZed]

I have people fall for this that don't even have Norton. It's amazing.

 

[britechguy]

I have people fall for this that don't even have Norton. It's amazing.

I have not had anyone fall for it to the extent that they actually got to "end game," but I've had calls of panic where I've asked, "Do you have a subscription to Norton?," then, once the answer comes back, "No," I give them the 5-minute education on social engineering and actually congratulate them on asking when in a panic, rather than clicking/otherwise acting when in a panic. Then I hope that they won't panic the next time this occurs, and as sure as the sun rises each day, it will.

One of my greatest triumphs, in my opinion, is that I've managed to get one of my senior citizen clients who was the very worst kind of "act in panic" sort to stop. And even though she calls me for assurance, it is she who's recognized that something is off and that she should not take any action besides calling me.

This is why I refuse to believe that anyone cannot be taught the same, if they're willing to listen and then, later, to use what they've learned.

 

[nlinecomputers]

This is why I refuse to believe that anyone cannot be taught the same, if they're willing to listen and then, later, to use what they've learned.

Gotta disagree with that simply because much of this is caused by deteriorating mental health as we age. As we get older many simply lose the ability to judge the safety of things. We grow more gullible and less skeptical. And while you can combat that at some point like all of our facilities it will fail more often than work.

 

[britechguy]

Gotta disagree with that simply because much of this is caused by deteriorating mental health as we age.

OK. Even I can agree with that. My mother died after a battle of over a decade with Alzheimer's Disease just last year.

I didn't think I needed to make the proviso, "Provided mental capacity is within normal limits for independent living, including managing one's own affairs." Certain things really do, and should, go without saying. I wouldn't apply what I'd said previously to my nephew, who happens to be on the autism spectrum, either, and don't think I'd need to qualify that in typical conversation, either.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I've seen plenty of "adults" in their 30s and 40s that don't have the cognitive capacity to make these determinations on their own.

I'm really terrified to see what happens when they age.

 

[britechguy]

I've seen plenty of "adults" in their 30s and 40s that don't have the cognitive capacity to make these determinations on their own.

Among a number of others, I'm sure. You really can't cure stupid, or just not pausing, for just a moment to think, before doing anything.

P.T. Barnum was right.

 

[fincoder]

all of the above now don't actually do anything. They just sit back and let Defender do most of the lifting while they act as supplements.

All those antivirus products register themselves in Windows Security to be the primary antivirus for real-time scanning. When this occurs, Defender doesn't do any real-time scanning so the installed antivirus essentially takes over from Defender.

MalwareBytes AntiMalware has an option to turn off registration with Windows Security, to allow Defender to remain as the primary antivirus for real-time scanning. In this case MBAM also does real-time scanning (paid version only), so it acts in a supplementary role, but that option is not enabled by default. As far as I know, only MBAM has this ability to work with another antivirus. It's been the designed like that since the beginning because it wasn't originally meant to replace the antivirus. On any customer PCs that have paid MBAM I always enable Defender because I still don't trust MBAM as a primary antivirus.

 

[britechguy]

Given how robust Windows Defender, as part of Windows Security, is as currently implemented I do not recommend any third-party antivirus/security suite.

Windows Defender has been ranking in the Top 10 of every testing lab's testing I've reviewed for years now, and very often in the Top 5 and outranking paid competitors.

@fincoder, you said what I was thinking before I could, for which I thank you. I do see enough machines with third party security suites involved to know that Defender is out of the picture, entirely, for any that I know of. You can run an offline scan, but that's about it.

 

[GTP]

On this occasion it's a 20 year old university student majoring in Criminal Law.
Lucky I was there when she got the message because she was about to click the links to follow through thinking it was legit.
Apparently some of her friends also received the same message and did follow through....ugh

 

[britechguy]

On this occasion it's a 20 year old university student majoring in Criminal Law.

When I consider all the things I didn't know when I was 20 years old . . . [Not to mention the things I didn't know that I didn't know.]

 

[GTP]

Hmmm to be 20 again...
My (poorly made) point was that with young people so bound to Social Media and haveing every SM app on the planet I thought that of all people Gen Z would be more aware of this stuff.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Hmmm to be 20 again...
My (poorly made) point was that with young people so bound to Social Media and haveing every SM app on the planet I thought that of all people Gen Z would be more aware of this stuff.

They are aware of the social world of the app not the technology behind it. Kids don’t even know what a URL is anymore. I ask someone to go “microsoft.com” and they type out Microsoft into the url/ search bar which takes them Google. People have no fraking clue how to directly get to a website anymore. The stupid is real.

 

[britechguy]

My (poorly made) point was that with young people so bound to Social Media and haveing every SM app on the planet I thought that of all people Gen Z would be more aware of this stuff.

It's really a combination of whether a given thing is considered salient by the reader and how much of the "this could never happen to me!" factor still exists. For the young, what is salient is mostly amusement/pleasure and the "this could never happen to me!" factor is astronomical.

I was floored (but no longer am) when I first realized that the several generations now that have grown up with computers since the moment they were born often know less about them than the generations before them did. Part of that, I think, is that computers are in the "appliances I've always had around" category and where maintenance/repair is never something that's been done or attempted. Very much how many people are about the automobiles they drive, as but one example.

I think I'm at not quite the lower end of the age group where computers were something new, period, and the personal computer in particular. (I'm 60, and there are still some who are in their 50s who still fit that category, maybe even very late 40s). And when they appeared on the scene they were very much NOT the automated, self-maintaining (in a vast number of ways that we, even as techs, seldom even think about anymore) machines that they are now. Very little was "out of sight, out of mind" and one false move really could spell disaster.

I learned most of what I know about how to fix these things by actually having to fix these things back in the day. And while things have changed over time, the rock solid foundation of it all has remained virtually unchanged. But you had to have been around when the foundation was being built, literally.

I think they may become more aware of certain threats once their young, hormonal, pleasure seeking days begin to wind down (which is usually late 20s to early 30s), but not until then. The young are, as a group, convinced they are invincible. This has been true for much longer than I've been alive, and will remain true long after I've turned to dust.