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By the names Mac. winrar, and qbitorrent
i command all ye computer dorks hear my call
emerge from thine sacred thrones of solitute
and bless the ignorant with your almighty ways.
i "inherited" a pc, what are all the steps i can check for spyware
and or all related i can put into work without
actually re-installing the system from scratch
You best bet is to do a clean wipe of the Computer and install the Operating system back on. I use Linux Mint, its free and mostly works like windows. Only issues Ive had is Gaming. But my laptop is crap so I didnt expect much.
I have kin on two continents who meet mine every cyber-qualm with a sneer of "conspiracy theory." That's what comes from not drinkin' my Kool Aid, I guess.
I have kin on two continents who meet mine every cyber-qualm with a sneer of "conspiracy theory." That's what comes from not drinkin' my Kool Aid, I guess.
By the names Mac. winrar, and qbitorrent
i command all ye computer dorks hear my call
emerge from thine sacred thrones of solitute
and bless the ignorant with your almighty ways.
i "inherited" a pc, what are all the steps i can check for spyware
and or all related i can put into work without
actually re-installing the system from scratch
It's very straightforward because laptops get returned, refurbished and resold all the time, and generally both buyer and receiver don't want anything left on the computer, so the automated process is robust. (* Caveat in footnote)
If you inherited this laptop from a person you trusted (wouldn't spy on you) who was also very tech savvy (unlikely to click PDFs in emails and download spyware themselves) then you wouldn't HAVE to do a factory reset but I still would just for simplicity's sake? (Although really, anyone tech-savvy enough to trust would have done it before they gave it to you.) It's just easier than manually going through and fixing whatever idiosyncratic systems and setting the previous owner set up.
...and then you'll need to delete wherever bloatware it came officially installed with, and remove Microsoft's more irritating features, but that can be streamlined a bit - it's a common need so easily googleable eg:
* My husband is a cybersecurity guy who is moderately paranoid about things like spyware and companies' willingness to hand data over to cops without seeing a warrant, so if he says a factory reset is enough, it's enough.
That's if you're RECEIVING a laptop. If you're PASSING ON a used laptop, and want to make sure any file is completely and permanently unrecoverable if it were to be seized by law enforcement, then a factory reset is not enough.
As the receiver, with enough effort and expertise, you could recover some of the files the previous owner deleted. But you can't be infected by spyware etc by those not-100%-permanently-deleted-files. Hope that makes sense
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Spoke to husband and need to add on to that (never ask an expert anything if you want an answer other than "it's complicated")
Factory reset can be evaded by putting in a lot more effort, eg by physically putting something into the machine (but a fresh reinstall wouldn't fix that). And the person would have to be really dedicated to spying on you or the previous owner, for eg if the previous owner was a government dissident. Husband: "or someone could be running a scam of selling compromised laptops and scraping passwords. I absolutely doubt that'd happen just because there's much lower effort ways to scam people I'm just illustrating that if someone really wants to they can."
Basically if you're paranoid that a factory reset isn't enough, you just can't use a second-hand laptop. Husband: "if you're suspicious just buy first-hand laptops; if you're VERY suspicious buy laptop components unpredictably from random suppliers; even then china might be tracking you."
"it's like physical infection control really. like there's no "this will make sure", there's just how much effort you're willing to put into precaution vs against how paranoid you are about being infected"
The only truly safe route to avoid physical infection would be the Boy in the Bubble, and then you still have to trust the people who bring you food. There is no endpoint to perfect security.
So there's no binary answer, you have to assess your own suspicion against how many precautions you're willing to take. Unless you're also using a password manager with a physical key, Duckduckgo, protonmail, encrypted messaging, etc etc, then the used laptop is not the chink in your armour
(To me the tl;dr of this is still "a factory reset is enough" but I leave that with you)
There is a gent named Brett Stevens out there (Amerika.org, actually.) He uses the term "solipsism" for this, which strikes me as a bit idiosyncratic. In part, he refers to people who fervently want a world where nothing at all changes, or at least nothing that too greatly inconveniences them. Anything that's too disturbing (what even recent decades called "thought-provoking") gets filtered out. (Referring to what passes for "far-Right," he notes they fervently long for the passing of the existing order, but not if it jeopardizes their retirement income.) I suppose his "solipsism" here captures a sort of reverse-paranoia. One is reminded of Voltaire who longed for a revolution that would leave most pieces of his life exactly in place.
