My question on the syncthing appliction is as follows:Since your data is synched between computers it sounds like it might also sync any malware (I realize Linux doesn’t get much if any malware) between the systems also. This means you risk putting all your data at risk if one system gets infected. Anyone know the answer to this Bob
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- You don’t have to include all systems in a single pool.
- The risk is there with every backup solution. If you pull a malicious back up, it can affect anything, too.
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I don’t use syncthing, but I do use Resilio Sync (the product formerly know as btsync)… had a recent experience where my “corporate” Win10 laptop at work, kept reporting some malware, and it was being stored on a Resilio Sync “share”… the Windows AV product would repeatedly delete or disable it (quarantine?)… then Resilio Sync would happily put it back (in the deleted archive “area” ) and Microsoft threat detection would spit the dummy again, delete it, and Resilio Sync would put it back 
… took me a while to find the sucker (from a Linux terminal), it was some weirdly named file, that I’m sure got there through MS Windows in the first place! It was a Win32 binary, anyway, with random characters in the filename, none of my Linux boxen would have put that there…
Few years back, had a “virus” infect a bunch of stuff I shared over SMB on my home network, one of my daughters must have “introduced” it… basically, it would create an exe file of the name of a subfolder, with a Windows Explorer “folder” icon… so if you had show filename extensions turned off, it looked like a folder, you double click it - and it would spread further! But at least it was consistent, every single one of these was the exact same size in K, my SMB share was running on FreeNAS, so just wrote a shell script to look for that exact size file with *.exe and delete it, every 15-30 minutes…
I don’t usually run AV on any of my Linux stuff… very occasionally I’ll install ClamAV and run it over some selected folders… but not religiously… I guess I should be more careful, easy to become complacent…
Exhibit #1, when a n00b uses Windows… This is one of the very first things I turn on when I set up a new Windows installation.
The worst virus I had was when I installed some shady shit on a brand new laptop. Then the virus appended its payload to EVERY SINGLE file on the computer. Luckily, it was a brand new installation anyway, so to hell with that… (I wouldn’t have installed that software on an important computer anyway, though…)
I’ve still got a virus affected/infected file in my digital media collection, that I’ve had since the early 2000’s… It’s an avi of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, it’s got an “activeX” virus in it - cannot believe Microsoft opened up their media player to such vulnerabilities… i.e. it only affects your 'poota if you open it in Windows Media Player, not in VideoLan/VLC or DIVX player … how lame is that? I’ve no reason to get rid of it, why kill more electrons and chew up valuable bandwidth to get a virus free copy
Do you login to every user’s profile and set that feature “off”? I don’t build Windows machines very often, but when I do, I hardly ever setup user profiles (other than create the accounts) for other users… Both my daughters are quite capable of installing Windows on their computers themselves, and my wife only uses her iPad (and occasionally an ancient Macbook Air).
Well, if I deem the serviced person as worthy, I do it because I have my standards. If I need to do it quickly and/or I don’t care, then maybe I wouldn’t do it. Though, I never really was in such a situation. Additionally, when I set up Windows, I usually set up something WITHIN their account already, by installing stuff, etc. and I can’t do that without being annoyed to hell not seeing the file extensions. So, even if I wouldn’t think about explicitly turning the “feature” off, it would go like this:
- Set up Windows.
- Set up User.
- Download some program.
- Try to open program, but notice, you don’t see the “.exe”.
- Turn off the hide “feature”.
- Continue setting up the computer.
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