Administrator Accounts vs. Standard User Accounts

 

Are you doing everything you can to protect your computer?

If running your computer while using an Administrator Account, you are not.

According to a BeyondTrust analysis: Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights." The company found that 92 percent of the critical vulnerabilities Microsoft issued bulletins for could be mitigated by configuring users to operate without administrator rights.

By default - Microsoft  sets an administrator account to each system. Many users set this default administrator account as their login account. They may rename the account, but the account itself still has Administrator rights. This opens such a user to ROOTKITS, viruses and other malware.

At a minimum, we recommend you create a NEW account with administrative rights (even renamed, hackers are able to identify the default admin account by a Security ID (SID) in the registry). Once you have created your new administrative login, you should disable the default administrator account.

Additionally, we recommend you use your computer using a STANDARD type account.

You will need an administrator type account to add and remove software and drivers, but normally an end user does not need to use an administrator account on a day to day basis. We recommend you run StopSign using an administrator account - as it will clean all user profiles when running as an administrator account.

NOTE: We cannot assist you in doing this, nor are we responsible for any problems that may arise from creating or changing user accounts. The links below take you to Microsoft's support site for instructions to create or change a user account. We recommend backing up your data before proceeding.

CREATE/CHANGE A NEW USER ACCOUNT WINDOWS XP

CREATE A NEW USER ACCOUNT WINDOWS VISTA

CREATE A NEW USER ACCOUNT WINDOWS 7

CREATE A NEW USER ACCOUNT WINDOWS 8  (Click "Create a local account")

 

For further assistance -

SUBMIT A TICKET

or

CONTACT SUPPORT

Additional user information may be found via the StopSign KNOWLEDGE BASE.