The Extended-Family Sysadmin

[Irrev-Black]

Some of us cop it, right? A job with boxen and blinkenlights involved, and suddenly every-bloody-thing that uses electrons is brought before you, that you might undo user-initiated damage, heal the dead, or (harder yet) deshittify a proprietary system.

And it doesn't necessarily stop at the device: there's a whole cyberverse out there, for which you might be deemed responsible.

That's what this thread's about.

And, to kick off, some advice I found useful, about what to do if one of your fam has suffered a scam.

https://kolektiva.social/deck/@Em0nM4st ... 5414404748

Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange
Em (is looking for work) :official_verified:
@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange

If you are the tech-savvy person within your family or friends group :blobcatcool: :

Never ever shame someone for coming to you for advice after being the victim of a scam, malware, or for using an unsecure product.

If you do this,
they might never come back to you later. They might just feel so ashamed they will just stay alone with their tech problems.

Instead, always tell them:

1. It was a good idea to come to you with this. Be empathetic with them

2. Give them advice on how to minimize the damage now. Actionable advice

3. Help them harden their security for now and for the future. Recommend better products to them. But be careful not to overwhelm them with advice. One step at the time

4. Talk to them with respect and empathy. Tell them how the people who abused their trust are horrible and anyone can fall for the right scam. Remind them there are things to do to reduce the risks of being victimized again in the future, and help them slowly implementing these

5. Be thankful they trusted you with this. It means they think highly of you

[nibble]

Yes these scam artists are on the rise. My sister recently came to me regarding an email she supposedly received from Microsoft stating that her account will be deactivated unless she clicks on the "following link". She's a little paranoid about these things and rightly so. I had a look and sure enough the link was to a cloudlflare server which hosted a look alike MS mail portal.

Anyway, you can use some AI to verify check dodgy emails, links etc.. I've been getting people to use this

https://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/scamio.html