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As you say, we all make different assessments of risk, but the fact that your friend exposed his bank details to these “technicians” (i.e. scammers), means that his financial security has been seriously compromised

If it was me, I’d maybe try one more time to get him to implement Alec’s suggestions. You’re not being alarmist, just realistically sensible

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Cybertooth, kc27

Thanks for pointing that out

I’ve just checked, and I see that I do actually have a sender of “Suggested” defined, which had defaulted to On (now turned Off), although, as mentioned, I hadn’t received any intrusive pop-ups recently (perhaps because of my Group Policy setting?)

Win 10 22H2. No third party add-ons. Notifications On (except for the check boxes, which are all Off). Focus Assist Off

Very little other tweakage that might be relevant, except that I have “Turn off Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program” enabled in Group Policy

Fingers crossed, but I’ve not seen this behaviour recently

EricB wrote:

I use Wordpad for composing correspondence required to be delivered by the postal service

Yeah, me too. I use it very infrequently (because, how many people use snail mail any more?) but I actually used it just the other day (because, corresponding with government agencies who still live in the age of quills and vellum)

But, mwah, if MS removes it I’ll just wait the extra few seconds for OpenOffice to load and use that instead. For personal use I really don’t understand why anybody would ever pay money to use MS Office

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EricB

I too use Thunderbird. I get a comparatively small amount of junk, some of which is from known sources and is not actively malicious (i.e. valid services I’ve used in the past who keep on trying to get me to use them again), and it mostly deals with that, and with the more potentially harmful stuff as well

It’s by no means perfect though. Occasionally it won’t block glaringly obvious spam, and sometimes it will consign emails from valid contacts to the Junk folder for no apparent reason

At the moment most of the obvious spam is obvious just because it’s so amateurish. Once the bad actors start using AI to craft more credible enticements then that will be a game-changer, and not in a good way

I left the UK over 10 years ago, so I doubt that I’m going to be personally affected by this, but the take-away from this and similar breaches is that it doesn’t matter how careful you are with your personal information, you have absolutely no control over how well other people protect it for you

When something like this happens, there really needs to be some proper accountability for a change. This sounds like it was potentially a big leak, and not discovered (or at least reported) for a long time either

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Myst, satrow, Microfix

Well, I guess I’ll just have to live without it then

I expect I’ll survive

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Myst, Microfix, Fred, cyberSAR

The problem isn’t the technology per se, it’s what people do with it

Corporations uses it to sell us stuff we don’t want. Governments use it to track us. Threat Actors use it to screw us over

And we are all complicit. Everywhere you go, people nowadays can seemingly only experience life through their mobile phones

But, same as with nuclear weapons, you can’t UNinvent stuff once it’s been invented. You just have to grit your teeth and get on with it

bbearren wrote:

NaNoNyMouse wrote:

I’ve never found a way of turning them off on my phone

I use Firefox on my phone, and my Firefox registration carries all my extensions with it, so I don’t see ads on YouTube on my phone, either.  I seldom watch YouTube on my phone, but when I do, no ads.

That’s useful to know. I use Firefox on my laptop, but I’d never bothered to install it on my mobile, because I do very little browsing on the phone, and what little I do goes through DDG

I’ve installed it now

I’ve never found a way of turning them off on my phone, so I never use YouTube on my phone, but I’ve just checked on my laptop and I’m not seeing any ads there at present. I use AdBlockPlus

If they make it so that you have to watch ads other than the paid promotions that some creators embed in their videos, then I’ll stop watching YouTube entirely

Really, letting advertisers run the world is almost as bad as letting politicians do it

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WSbobby-p, steeviebops

It’s nice that they have measures to “alert us to unauthorized activity”, and it’s nice that they “worked as designed”

What would be even nicer would be if they had measures to stop their customers’ data from being stolen in the FIRST place…

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Microfix, DrBonzo, Alex5723

1. Fox News
2. Tucker Carlson
3. Elon Musk

Must be true then

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks, SueW, Microfix, b

Susan Bradley wrote:

We are continuing the exploration of badging

I think they mean “badgering”…

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Bill C., steeviebops, deuce120, Perq, WCHS, GeeBeeDee, Douglas, Cybertooth

RetiredGeek wrote:

Did you by any chance use Process Explorer to determine what Process ID 4 was

I didn’t, but I’ve just run the test again together with Process Explorer, and it doesn’t really seem to give any extra useful information

As fas as I can tell (from its description in Resource Monitor) Process Id 4 is “NT Kernel & System”, so I’m guessing it’s one that shouldn’t be shut down…

Hi RG, thanks for the explicit instructions. Once I’d followed them I was able to get the task to work successfully

I’ve attached the results. I didn’t actually try selecting Yes, as “System” seemed a fairly non-specific application to terminate

If it’s any help, the steps I took to force the Rejection message were:

1. Attach one of my USB backup drives
2. Open and mount one of the files on it in TrueCrypt
3. Try and eject the device using “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media”

I have the policy for the device set to “Quick Removal”, but I always use “Safely Remove…”  because I’m a cautious soul. If there’s any other info you’d like just let me now