Re:Germany bans Facebook from handling WhatsApp data over pr...
by dspillett on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @05:09AM
(#27128278)
That is only going to work if you are prepared to be seen as unhelpful. The likelihood is that she'll just as someone else to show her the photos and complain about you while doing so. Personally I'd be fine with that, but it depends upon your family dynamic.
I took a similar tack over malware & backups some years ago. I was spending far too much time being family tech support in "oh shit" moments, trying to remove crap from people's laptops and other, then (when I gave up doing it that way) hunting down all their files and backing them up before hosing and reinstalling the OS, hunting out the correct drivers, and each time giving advice on keeping backups, avoiding malware, telling them that they must keep any driver discs (or generate them from the machine) when they get a new device so they can be identified & reinstalled later, etc, each time being completely ignored because once things were restored they completely forgot the issue. Once I stopped rolling over and being infinitely and immediately helpful, instead saying "without the backups and such I asked you to keep it might take a few hours to sort this out, I can do it for you but I probably can't fit it in for a couple of weeks" most stopped asking me to help - not because they see my time as having value or because they've started to get less dim about letting malware in, but because I'm seen as grumpy and unhelpful.
I took a similar tack over malware & backups some years ago. I was spending far too much time being family tech support in "oh shit" moments, trying to remove crap from people's laptops and other, then (when I gave up doing it that way) hunting down all their files and backing them up before hosing and reinstalling the OS, hunting out the correct drivers, and each time giving advice on keeping backups, avoiding malware, telling them that they must keep any driver discs (or generate them from the machine) when they get a new device so they can be identified & reinstalled later, etc, each time being completely ignored because once things were restored they completely forgot the issue. Once I stopped rolling over and being infinitely and immediately helpful, instead saying "without the backups and such I asked you to keep it might take a few hours to sort this out, I can do it for you but I probably can't fit it in for a couple of weeks" most stopped asking me to help - not because they see my time as having value or because they've started to get less dim about letting malware in, but because I'm seen as grumpy and unhelpful.