I got an email alert today from Comcast (XFINITY identified one or more of your computers may be infected with a bot). I am assuming it is valid, but solving it is not as straightforward as it should be.
First of all, I'm mainly a Linux user, and even when I used Windows all the time, I never had problems. However...
We recently took in a temporary student from Taiwan for 6 weeks, who is taking courses at the nearby community college. Her laptop is a Windows 7 system with Chinese language. I'm not even very familiar with windows 7, and I don't read Chinese at all.
However, I do have an OpenDNS account, although I wasn't using it lately. So, I immediately went in and changed my router's DNS addresses to use OpenDNS, and enabled all their security features, including "Malware/Botnet Protection". I've double-checked, and the setup was validated by their website that I'm using their DNS. I will monitor the logs to make sure her computer is actually using it, in case something changed her DNS settings. I may try using ipconfig to see if it works in English so I can check her system, too.
So, my question is mainly whether this would be enough to isolate the problem, since fixing it seems to be a lot of trouble. She's not very computer-savvy, and is busy with schoolwork, and also she'll be gone in a month, so I don't really want to invest a lot of time and disruption of her work.
I will tell her about it, and see if she has antivirus running. I used to use Microsoft's free program, and perhaps she can use it if needed, and if they support Chinese language computers. Why can't everyone just use English, darnit! :)
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