As you know I clean individual and corporate PCs that get bogged down, locked up or incapacitated from viruses, spyware and other malware.
I try to get as much history of the problem as I can before I begin. Too many times the
conversation goes like this:
"Well, the last thing I remember was that I was on ______book (or my_____) and then everything went wrong."
Ok, I am not here to debate the good, bad or ugly of these social networking sites.. I am just a voice of warning. After the many people that bring their troubled PCs to me and after I get the history of the problem, I am convinced to stay far away from those sites.
My own experience was with a site called beb____.com that looked innocent enough. This was associated with my high school class reunion, so I played along for a while. But after some very disturbing emails and invites from females of questionable legality, I pulled the plug.
So now I don't know what new background someone has chosen and I don't know what new deviantART images my old classmates have added to their page, oh well.
Now the same classmates want me to join them on Face____ or My____ and I won't do it.
The main reason is the actual viruses I have been up against. In the past six months some very sneaky and ruthless viruses have hit the web with terrible results. I will put a blog entry up on a few of those soon, so please check back.
At any rate, these viruses have rendered PCs completely useless, threatened to lose all documents and data and corrupted hard drives in ways that were very difficult to fix. Most of them start from a popup window that looks like they are trying to help you (Your PC is infected with the BR549 virus, would you like to perform a full system scan?) If you click yes, the virus installs itself on your PC. I suppose they feel justified in what they are doing because "You invited them in when you clicked [Yes]."
Somehow, they get past a lot of antivirus programs by asking you for permission via the popup window.
If you did click yes, it will do a mock scan of your computer and report some huge number of viruses (like 325), but it won't clean them unless you buy their software. The problem is that THEY are the actual attack, the actual virus.
Then if you don't buy their software (from $50.00 to $100.00), they nag you every 25 seconds and slowy disable your PC until you feel you have no choice. DON'T DO IT !! Don't feed the slimeballs. They will actually take your credit card information and charge it to you, so there is a business behind the scenes. There has got to be something there to report to the Better Business Bureau.
Internet Explorer's [Tools] Menu with Popup Blocker and Phishing Filter
Ok, now that I have finished my soap box oratory, what can we do about it?
- Turn on any pop up blockers or phishing filters available through your browser.
- Install an antivirus program and keep it up to date. There are several that are great, several that are free and several that are both. (ok fine, Avast, and AVG Free and ClamWin are some really good, free cleaners with active scanning.)
- Be very careful surfing through any social networking site.
- If an unexpected pop up shows up (one that is NOT your antivirus program) and tells you that you are infected and that you need to do a full system scan, GET OUT OF THERE ! Just shut your browser down completely. Then stay away from the site where the attack occured.
- (Without sounding like a commercial) If an infection like this happens to you, (and if you are local,) call me as soon as possible. The sooner you call, the easier it is to save your system and all your personal documents and data.
The biggest problem to me is that we as parents allow our kids to get on these sites and don't closely monitor them. An attack like I have described here can happen, go to the extreme and lock down your PC before you even know about it.
In part two I am going to talk about casually forwarding emails that can do just as much damage.
I welcome comments and discussion to this posting..
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