[ben_jones]

Great post. My father is similar to yours, but is also incredibly vehement about his privacy. A few years ago he fell victim to a fake microsoft support scam (foreign accent, cc details over the phone, etc.) and gave them full root access over whatever screen share software they used. He paid a few hundred bucks for them to fix fake problems on the PC, and I could never convince him that it was in fact a scam.

I've since given up completely on locking down the computer or protecting them from themselves in that regard. I occasionally get talked into basic tech support, but thats it.

It's really a relationship problem if anything (IMO).