[ale] Viruses and Spyware

[Preston Boyington]

George Johnson wrote:
> If anyone has any good suggestions on any "gotchyas" or things to
> beware of when going out to start a business cleaning off viruses and
> spyware from peoples computer systems I would be glad to hear them.  I
> am working on that Bart's PE and will also just take out a cd with
> good freeware like Spybot S&D (if anyone has any ideas in this area I
> would appreciate that also) to do the job.  Seems to be a demand down
> here. 
> 
> George

Be sure to know what you are removing.  Depending on if it is a business or residential client there are varying degrees of what you can and cannot remove.  Remove a suspicious program and suddenly then the client can't connect to their internet service or some odd / bastardized VPN they have at work.

I offer this type of thing here to my customers and it is a great way to put a "bug in their ear" about Linux software.

As a side note, I have had the privilege of being called into a business to do this sort of thing and was confronted by another computer company that "just happened to be there".  After some light banter and a minor confrontation (really, no long term damage) the nice judge had me present my business license and all related licenses for the software I used.  Thankfully I had receipts for everything that was not GPL and the judge saw things (mostly) in my favor.

Although this is _far_ from typical, I tell you this so you will know to cover your a$$.  Make sure that you document _everything_ you do and make backups of any / all local data.  There are some folks that are just looking for people to blame data loss on ("we lost $10,000 a day because...").  Being able to "prove" that you were not responsible for this is imperative, both for reputation and legal purposes.

-- 
Preston "81 days and counting" Boyington