Hello,
I need some help and input here please.
About a month ago, a client retired and took his laptop home from the domain environment to his home network. I offered for 1 hour labor to set it back up so that it was secure. He declined. 2 weeks later, his laptop was compromised and he lost a vast sum of money. Because the bad actor was able to log into his laptop, it didn’t have a timeout or lockscreen, whey were able to operate as him and siphon about $2M from his Vanguard account.
This caused me to audit all of my home users to see that at least the user accounts were password protected and that they timed out after 5 minutes.
That brings me to Fred. Fred refuses to have a password on his user account, and insists on it being an admin account. Without a password, there is no way to log the machine off. He has his wife’s PC and a couple other PC’s on the network which are vulnerable. He does his banking and all of his financial stuff on the laptop. He refuses to listen to reason. I have told him that it is not a matter of IF you get compromised, it is a matter of WHEN.
So my question for HTW is, what would you say to him? What would you say in the face of this? I am running out of patience.
Any input appreciated.
-ScottL
Scott Livingston
Arcane Computing, Inc.
"Who cares what you believe, "Said the captain, amazed.
"If you stood in my shoes Your eyes would be glazed."
-Neil Young/Greendale/Devil’s Sidewalk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqYNlJ1G_Ag
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Paul,
He has a rudimentary firewall in his router. However, the method that the bad actors are using these days are port 80 clients that are taking control of the PCs without the user’s knowledge. I have had 2 other users walk into their offices (home) and seen activity on their PCs. That’s when I get the frantic phone calls.
Scott
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On Jan 24, 2026, at 4:50 PM, Paul Koning <pa0...@gmail.com> wrote:
I assume he doesn't have a firewall with essentially everything disabled, right? If he does, then things aren't totally bleak.
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Thank you Paul. Maybe sometime tomorrow we can talk about this. You happen to know “Fred”.
Scott
From: howthi...@googlegroups.com <howthi...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of joel.e...@gmail.com
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2026 4:10 PM
To: howthi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [htw] Windows 11 Password
If you have any business relationship with Fred that relies on his data being secure, or that could somehow boomerang back and make you appear some how at fault for any losses Fred may incur, you should be just as concerned about the risk to you.
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Or a Fred.
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So Mike and Dave, you’re saying you don’t use a password on your workstations?
-ScottL
From: howthi...@googlegroups.com <howthi...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Mike Schietinger
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2026 7:36 AM
To: howthi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [htw] Windows 11 Password
Log in password and screen lock don't provide any meaningful security layers for a home user. They are ment to protect from physical access. If an external remote connection gets established they can get whatever they want anyway.
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So you are saying that all home computers are insecure?
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But wouldn’t you say that not even using a logon password is just asking for trouble? I mean you’re just leaving the door open for a bad actor.
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In the last 2 instances I’ve seen the machine was infected with a remote control client, whether by the user clicking on something or downloading something. Since the PC didn’t lock, the bad actor was able to do whatever they wanted until the activity was noticed by the user. My assumption is that if the PC was at least protected by a logon password the bad actor wouldn’t have free reign over the PC. That doesn’t take into account the remote client. I don’t know the solution to that one.
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