Spent last weekend fixing 14 family PCs after a nasty phishing wave hit my relatives

Honestly, it was a nightmare. My aunt in Detroit clicked a fake "package delivery" link and it spread through their group chat like wildfire. I spent Saturday and Sunday removing malware, resetting passwords, and teaching everyone about 2FA. Has anyone else had to do emergency cleanup for a whole extended family at once?

3 comments

3 Comments

kim1917d ago

Start with creating a family group chat just for security stuff. I do that for my own relatives now. @the_lucas has the right idea about dealing with banks, but I also set up a shared password manager for everyone, makes it way easier to rotate passwords when something goes wrong. Also tell them to never call numbers from emails or texts, always look up the official support line themselves...

patb125d ago

Yeah @kim191, my own password manager has more of my passwords than actual memories...

the_lucas7d ago

Man, that reminds me of my buddy Mark. His whole family got hit by one of those "Microsoft tech support" scams. His mom actually paid some Indian call center guy $300 to "fix" her computer, and then she gave him remote access to her bank account. Mark spent three days scrubbing her laptop and calling her credit card company. He said the worst part was explaining to his 70 year old uncle why his pension money was gone.