On 12/18/2012 9:10 AM, klem kedidelhopper wrote:
Recently a friend told me about a conversation he'd had with his
teenage son. It seems that the boy had been over here on several
occasions visiting with my nephew who lives with us, and apparently
the boy was bragging that they were looking at a few things that they
shouldn't have been looking at on my computer.

Rule #1, NEVER, EVER let anyone else touch your computer keyboard.
Rule #2, See Rule #1.

You can't trust kids...or adults...see rule #1.
If kids could be trusted to use good judgment, the teen pregnancy
rate would be much lower.

If you must provide computing resources for others, get them their
own computer.
See Rule #1.

For $14 and the price of a hard drive, you can set up your system
so that you can swap hard drives. Lock yours up when not in use.
Let the kids play with theirs.

Malware is stuff that gets downloaded to your system while you're
doing something else. It can compromise your life.

But there's another class of stuff that falls into the category
of STUPID.
My favorite horror story is that of the girl who used a torrent
to download some music. She went off to college.
The music was still in the shared folder and available for download
by anybody who wanted it.
Some time later, dad got a notice from the copyright holder
with an offer to settle out of court for damages of $4000/song.
It wasn't malware. It was something the kid agreed to without
reading the fine print or considering the fallout.

See Rule #1.

So, what now?
You can ask the kids nicely to retrace their steps. That might
give you some idea of the risk. You're no worse off than millions
of other families with kids.

If you cared a lot about security, you'd restore a backup and lock
up the computer.