HAY GUYS!!

[ithmarvin.livejournal.com]

Hello! I am a computer technician with a few years of battlefront experience.



I've had to deal with spyware up the ass at an old workplace with people. I mean, they deal with the craziest shit. This is the Circle of Spyware:

Part 1: User goes HURBLE DURBLE LOOKING UP JOKES ON THE INTERNET!!!! while picking up so many pieces of spyware like they're the Prince from Katamari Damacy.
Part 2: Spyware gets itself onto the computer through inexplicable ways usually involving user intervention ("I saw the exe and I wanted to see what it was, so I double clicked on it."/"It just came up all of a sudden while I was using Internet Explorer"/"I thought it looked cool, so I installed it")
Part 3: Computer becomes a terminal breeding ground for all the crap they picked up. Soon afterwards it becomes computer cancer.
Part 4: RING RING RING:
Me: Hello, IT. How can I help?
User: MARVIN YOU GOTTA HELP ME MY COMPUTER IS SO SLOW!!
Me: Uh huh.
User: I was just surfing the Internet!!! And now I have three thousand pop up boxes and someone's telling me that I won a free PS3! Can I click it?
Part 5: Extraction of the spyware
User: WORK FASTER, SLAVE!
Me: Shut the fuck up, you tool.
Part 6:
Me: I'm going to have to put this thing down.
User: GASP
Me: It's terminal, man.
User: ISN'T THERE ANYTHING YOU COULD DO???
Me: Besides recommend you for sterilization?
Part 7: Computer takes one in the head, gets reimaged, the circle is complete, repeat circle until IT technician goes on a shooting spree

Also, one time, I found a half-eaten candy bar gumming up the works in a laser printer. Don't ask me how it got there, it was reported as "a big brown streak on my status report". I thought someone had evolved there and actually found a good use for a status report.

Comments

[jecook]

eeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...

Granted, I did find a rubber band in the laser printer I tried t give a user this morning... (as in, tried, but the laptop has no parallel port)

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

That is why we have the commandment:
The user shalt not be given administrator rights and shalt thus not be able to install crap.
If they want to install something we do it, if they want us to install something other than standard software/allowed software the answer is no!

[jecook]

Yep.

We used to trust our users, but frankly, we are getting tired of wiping spyware for the nth time from the same person.

Unfortunately, a lot of our oddball software requires at least 'power user' access, so we grant them that.

Policy on all new machines is that we retain administrator rights, and user gets Power User, and that's it. The legacy machines machines are having a similar policy appplied to them as I touch them. It's just easier that way.

[shadowkat01.livejournal.com]

There are often creative ways around that. Eg. AutoCAD software will swear upside down and backwards that it requires admin priv to run. No user outside of IS on my network runs with anything greater than "restricted user". It took me two weeks, but I got it, and two registry changes later, AutoCAD runs as restricted user.

...do you have a link for that?

[fenrirvallin.livejournal.com]

And does it work for AutoCAD 2k6?

Re: ...do you have a link for that?

[shadowkat01.livejournal.com]

Here's a partial idea, cause I can't find the real link:
http://discussions.virtualdr.com/archive/index.php/t-58145.html

But to summarize, here's what we did:

1. Grant "Full Control" to All users on the Program Files/AutoCAD folder
2. Run regedt32, open the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT key.
3. Scroll down till you find the AutoCAD.Application.## keys.
4. Grant "Full Control" to All users on the AutoCAD.Application key
5. Grant "Full Control" to All users on the AutoCAD.Application.## key
6. Scroll until you find the "CLSID" key tree.
7. Grant "Full Control" on the "CLSID" key tree.

Technically, you only need the subkeys pertaining to AutoCAD on the CLSID tree. However, we weren't inclined to read through all 3,000 of the bloody things, so we just granted control on the entire key. You may need to experiment a bit with the AutoCAD.Application keys, I've not seen the registry trees for 2k6 yet. As a shotgun approach (if you're on a time crunch) just grant full control to all of them.

Pass on at will! Let me know how it works under 2k6 too, we'll be upgrading here soon.

Re: ...do you have a link for that?

[fenrirvallin.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, I have most of my users too scared to do stupid stuff like installing spyware. Go go small company politics.

Still useful information.

[taleya.livejournal.com]

Also, one time, I found a half-eaten candy bar gumming up the works in a laser printer. Don't ask me how it got there, it was reported as "a big brown streak on my status report". I thought someone had evolved there and actually found a good use for a status report.


*is killing self laughing*

[patgund.livejournal.com]

One time I told a user "You don't have to accept any fault, just tell me *why* you opened the case and *why* there's peanut butter on the logic board, okay???"

Of course, the user had no idea on why the peanut butter fairy mysteriously decided to grace the logic board with Skippy.

[babyfey.livejournal.com]

while picking up so many pieces of spyware like they're the Prince from Katamari Damacy.

*dies* Double geek points!!!

[kait-the-great.livejournal.com]

Me: I'm going to have to put this thing down.
User: GASP
Me: It's terminal, man.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

*rim shot*

[pantherchild.livejournal.com]

~"But I need Gator. For...work. Things."

~Bah! Users do not deserve the internet!~

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Cookies and beer for you.