“It says I can’t”

“What says you can’t?”

“The computer”

“What is the message?”

“It says it can’t”

“Tell me exactly what it says. I need to know that.”

“THIS IS THE PROBLEM WITH YOU NERDS, YOU MAKE THINGS SO DIFFICULT!”

Just here to brag that when my dad upgraded to windows 11, he was tricked into making a microsoft365 acct which was promptly compromised.

So I walked him through the process of downloading a Linux mint iso, checking the hash in powershell, downloading rufus, prepping install media, and getting him off windows for the remainder of his life.

I had no eyes on the situation. All over the phone. His browser was giving malware results for everything so no downloads could be trusted.

2 years on his only complaint is occasional printer problems. He’s in his 70s.

The number of times I have had this phone conversation is greater than 3:

“I accidentally clicked something on Facebook and now my computer is playing a loud noise and I can’t do anything and it says not to turn off my computer or all my data will be lost.”

“Restart your computer”

“But it says not to!”

“It’s a virus that just took over your computer. Why would you do what it told you?”

“I don’t want to lose all my files!”

“You don’t have any files on that computer and it doesn’t matter. Just restart.”

(Back and forth a few times)

“Oh, I just restarted and everything is back to normal. Never mind!”

My dad hasn’t installed banking on his phone. He also doesn’t know the password for his email and his phone logged him out. So what happens when his credit card is declined for a b&b he’s booked and (after calling him) they send him a link to arrange a bank transfer, but he’s only logged in on the tablet he doesn’t have with him?

🥴

My parents drove me mad trying to remotely setup mom’s new phone, team viewer does not work on her phone so I have my dad hold the camera over the screen so I could see what they are doing, except dad keeps moving his hand so the screen does not fully remain in view and my mum doesn’t understand a single basic concept about smart phones and will drive me nuts asking me twice if she should do something I explicitly asked her to do, only to then find out she has no clue how to do it.

My father is a teacher with two masters degrees in engineering, my mother is a teacher with a bachelor’s in math. My father taught tech starting in 1985 in the last 10ish years I’ve been their tech support, my degree is in philosophy.

if she won’t use or learn a password manager, then get her an address book to write them down in. it’s got tabs for organizing sites alphabetically and plenty of room for each entry to have the site, username, password and a date (it was added to the book or updated). there are ‘password books’, but an address book works just as well. the labels on the blanks don’t need to match with what you’re actually using it for.

i make my own for people that need one, using a page layout i made, printed and 3-hole punched, then put into either a folder with clips to hold the paper or a small 3-ring binder.

Follow up: any advice for preferably FOSS remote desktop Linux to Windows 11 and Android to Android phone?

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