> Luckily, some were sensible enough to run it in a virtual machine.

or, that virtual machines should be more common - mum and dad's computers should have vm software installed, so that they can then be free from having to worry bout things they download. The mantra could be " run in the vm, and you'll be safe".

Using the same virtual machine for everything means its just as much of a hassle to wipe it as to wipe your real machine, and your regular activities are at risk from the crap you install into the vm -to be secure it would have to be machines that reset themselves, not just virtual. What about when mum and dad actually want to install a new program or save some files?

If we had something like incognito mode for the operating system that would be ideal.

Knoppix has been around since 2000 :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoppix

they may be susceptible to having fallen victim to sneaky trojans from previous file executions, but resetting a VM to a previous image state is trivial.

a new class of victim : infected VMs

an infected vm is no victim. Lets say you downloaded a pirated game which also has malware in it. You play said game in a vm specifically made _for_ that game. So the malware only runs when you are actually using the vm.

You'd have a vm for each specific piece of software that is untrustworthy, and sharing of files can occur thru sanctioned channels (such as a local, safe temp directory shared by each vm, or read only mounts).

Aren't you reinventing app sandboxes here?

That's a good question - why don't modern consumer OSes offer simple, convenient one-click app sandboxing?

Because programs operate on files which need to be accessible by other programs. This is the whole point of files with interoperable file formats.

The applications that does not do this, i.e. games, are good candidates for sandboxing, but normal applications? Not so much.

Well, you could include the standard file operations (launch program by doubleclicking that file, save that particular file; secure "save-as" selection provided by OS) as managed parts of the sandbox; and have a functional app that is unable to open&change any files that the user doesn't intentionally choose.

You don't know how to take a snapshot, then delete it?

He does, mum and dad don't, and it's still a hassle.

If only there was some sort of Remote Desktop software...

Yes, because a completely different person taking time of his life to fix your computer problems for free is not a hassle, right?

A monthly checkup for your parents computer is a very minor hassle, and it's made much easier when you can use remote desktop software.

It's worth while to you also, it would negatively affect you if your parents did something dumb or there was a virus on their computer that uploaded all of their banking information, or if they kept a desktop file with their passwords rather than using a secure password manager. If their identify got stolen or someone stole money from them, or their names got tarnished, that would harm you, correct?

No it doesn't . backup the disk image