computer viruses

[jacin]

hi all just thought i would put on here about the new viruses going around.

we have recently had heaps of viruses and worms in our computer in the last 2 weeks and these were from popular sites like Ebay and Facebook. our computer was having trouble and i kept getting this screen pop up to tell me to install ANTIVIRUS 2009, ( DONT DO IT ,it melts your computers hard drive making it completely useless ) lucky i didnt, but the virus still got into our computer and practally disabled it making it almost useless.

it took 5 days to fix and once it was up and going again we contracted another virus this time disabling almost every function the computer has down to not being able to open the cd tray. all up our computer has 74 viruses, 5 trojan horses and 2 information seeking worms.

we use PC cillan, AVG, norton and Macafee none of which were of any use to protect us against these things. the viruses on Ebay which were published in the "Australian newspaper " Saturdays edition approx 3 weeks ago says " Ebay knows of the viruses but will do nothing about it because it is too difficult to shut the site down, so there is a class action happening in america of ebay users taking ebay to court because there comps are now useless."

the other virus is KOOBFACE (book spelt backwards) which basically melts your computer making it a frisbee, this virus has been found by Macafee and statements to the media say "it is like a program that your computer recieves and does not recognize it as a virus, and that is how it is getting in" .when you get it in your computer from facebook the virus goes to your list of friends and sends them all emails from you, something innocent to the effect of " Hello or HI from me " which they open because they think you sent it and then their computer becomes infected, that is what happened to us, and then so on, so pretty much every one on the site gets the virus atleast once.

when the virus gets into your computer it hides in the virus protection software because even though you scan your comp for viruses the scanner never scans its own software so the virus is in there forever protected unless you find another lot of virus software to scan then the two virus protectors end up fighting each other.

Microsoft this morning announced that they have a new update available to help try and close the window that these viruses seem to be getting threw, and if you go to your start menu go to control panel and on the left hand side it says about updates ( make sure you have your internet turned on when doing this) click on it and it will take you threw to the new updates and then install and make sure you restart your comp for the updates to take effect. I did this and the new install took 1 hr and 20 minutes to down load, so that is how big it is

also it doesnt hurt to do a disc clean up on your comp as that deletes cookies and the like so when the worms get in they can't follow what you have been looking at. we lost everything on our comp photos, emails, email address, programs, sites the whole lot as we basically had to nuke our comp and get it back to factory settings so its like having a brand new comp with nothing on it, so we have to start all over again. if there is anything you value on your comp like photos, info, addresses etc PLEASE PLEASE save it to disc as you will lose it too and have nothing left like us. our comp runs alot slower now and its not the same but as long as it still gets me on to here im happy.

lucky for us we have tech savy friends that helped us out for free but if we had to pay for their service and experience it would have cost us between $80 to $120 an hour imagine that bill after nearly 2 weeks of trying to get it all fixed, cheaper to buy another comp in that case. i was never really a computer person, honestly i think they are the biggest paper weights ever invented but after having all these things happen to our comp i am more aware of what i can do to protect or try to protect us against invasion.

when we first got the internet set up including our email account we had a friend do it all for us, thinking we would never need to know that stuff how wrong we were when that friend moved away and we were left on our own to try and figure out what all the jargon ment, something as simple as getting emails is impossible unless you can set back up your email account and also type in what server recieves your emails and what server sends your emails and is it POP3, HTTP or something else your comp uses to get emails. we had a hell time trying to figure this out ( we couldnt ring Telstra as it was after their office hours ) and finally i rang another friend who happens to use outlook express for emails and got their info off them.

with so many internet providers these days it is not easy to find some one who uses exactly the same thing you do. well good luck to you all out there and forwarned is forarmed and i hope that this info has been helpful to someone else out there. all the best and Merry Christmas to you all

[Annabelle Joy]

A couple of points for others reading Jacin's email message.

Firstly, as soon as you realise you have a virus, the easiest way to clear it out is likely to be to go: Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore, Next then choose a restore date that's earlier than the problem appeared. This doesn't actually clear the program off your computer, but does take all of it's entries out of the registry (and any others that may have been added in the same time) and the virus can't run. You may need to go into Safe Mode to do this. The most common way of getting to Safe Mode is to hit the F8 key rapidly and repeatedly as the computer starts up, then choose Safe Mode. This starts the computer with nothing extra running and usually disables the viruses. The screen looks a bit odd, but don't worry about that.

If the above quick fix doesn't work, it should be possible for a computer technician to recover your photos, email addresses, but not programs, before the computer is cleaned. You may be able to do it yourself, at least My Documents, Try going into Safe Mode if you can't start it normally.

If the computer is cleaned by someone knowledgeable, ask them to partition it and to put your personal files and email onto the second partition. This apparently creates a second drive, D: (although both are actually still on the same physical drive), and means personal files are not lost if the C: drive ever has to be cleaned again.

If you need to set up your email again, phone your ISP. They will talk you through exactly what you need to do. Also, if you go to their web site, most have detailed instructions on setting up yourself.

It's always wise to save your personal files to another device regularly. I think the best option is to have an external hard drive. However, the little flash drives are an option. Remember, that nothing is infallible, and in my experience the flash drives are more fallible that external hard drives.

I occasionally need to do a clean install of Windows for a client. I do a much better job than most technicians, and charge a lot less. I avoid it if I possibly can. The reinstallation is only a small part of the total process. Typically, it takes me around ten hours to get the computer back to the way it was (I reload everything for them and set up emails, etc., which most technicians don't do because of the time/cost factor). That may not include the user's files if I cannot read the disk. Writing files to CD is another option. Make multiple copies of each CD.

One final bit of advice. Never throw out any CDs containing software because you think you don't need them. If the computer has to be cleaned completely, you need those CDs.

And one more. Go to this site: http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html and download and run Belarc Advisor, then print out and file what appears on the screen. It provides a lot of information for anyone who may need to reinstall Window, such as Microsoft keys, a list of all of the programs on your computer and details of the hardware.

AJ

[sundaymorningstaple]

Would sure like to know the sites she was visiting! eBay and I are good friends on an almost daily basis here, the US and Aus. Had the little glitch two weeks ago, but by reading the maintenance section of eBay I was well informed of it so it was not a problem. Facebook I don't know as I don't see any need for it. It would sound like someone has been opening up all their email even when they know it's nobody they know.

I haven't had a computer virus in donkey's years. I use Symantec products and adaware and I'm pretty kool. However, constant installs and reinstalls of programs has slow me down a lot. Will be probably doing a complete greenfield reinstall over the holidays now that I have removed most of the files from my D drive and put them on a brand new G drive (Maxtor Plus 4 external 1TB drive. My Xmas pressie ) I couldn't even defrag as I only had 10% space available on both the C & D & only 8% on an 80GB external. C drive has too many orphan files around as it's been over 3 years since it's been cleaned and a reinstall done.

Anytime somebody tells you your HDD is gonna melt, it time to log onto Norton site and look for Hoaxes as there are a lot of them out their.....

[jacin]

well sms the sites i was visiting were normal everyday sites like you tube , ebay,this one,facebook and fordmods are the main ones. i never ever open emails from ANYBODY i dont know to the point im paronid about it and i always block sender if i dont know them. Dont judge me and snicker me either if you have a problem with me PM me , keep your snide remarks to your self and not all of us are tech savy gods as you appear to be.

[Annabelle Joy]

Good advice from SMS re hoaxes. Any time you receive an email warning about a 'new virus' that tells you to forward it to everyone you know, it's almost certainly a virus. You can usually check by putting a phrase from the message into Google inside double quotes "like this" followed by the word hoax. Don't forward it on, it only helps with clogging up the Internet.

Very few viruses arrive as email attachments any more. These days, everyone has antivirus programs that catch them. Most viruses (malware is a common term) are downloaded from web sites you visit. Don't ever download anything that you don't know about that is supposed to check, then clean up the viruses on your computer. Unless it's your antivirus program that's warning you, it's probably a virus, not a cure. Many of these find 'viruses' and tell you that by buying their program (around US$30) you can remove the viruses. If you don't buy they keep interrupting you with warning messages. Once you pay and run the program, the messages and the viruses all disappear. However, no other virus checking program will find those viruses. It's just an annoying and costly scam to get you to part with your money and make someone wealthy.

SMS, a major reason for computers slowing down over time is the continual Windows updates. Over the past several months I have upgraded the memory of a number of 256 MB computers. When they first came out they were quite fast. In recent months they have all become deadly slow, because they are spending all their time swapping bits of Windows in and out because there's no longer enough memory. Add another 512 MB or more of memory and they become useable again. Defragging also helps if it hasn't been done in a while.

I also don't get viruses on my computer. However, I also don't often use the popular sites where most of these are picked up. I use only free software, Avast and Windows Defender. Other good, free programs are Adaware, Spyware Blaster and Spybot, and there are a number of others. I find that the commercial programs slow computers down and create problems (too complex). For people with limited computer use away from the popular sites (most of my clients are retired people) the free software is quite adequate. When clients do occasionally download something that gets past, it's usually because they have clicked to download something a message told them they needed without knowing what it is. Don't ever download something unless you know exactly what it is.

AJ

[garden goddess]

This has been a really handy thread for those of us technically challenged......well .....just me actually......
LILY

[asy]

Jacin, I don't think SMS was having a go at you, his post certainly doesn't seem that way.

If you don't mind, and CERTAINLY not having a go at you, but, could you please edit your post to put some paragraph splits into it, as it's very difficult to read in one big lump. I'd be VERY happy to do it for you if it would help, so long as you're not offended by my editing your post... It's important information, but I worry that people won't read it as it's difficult to follow as it is...

With regard to warning emails that were mentioned, which isn't what Jacin was talking about, but still on topic...

Most of those emails warning of impending doom and even purporting to be from the Australian Federal Police and such are either viruses unto themselves, or alternately clever ways to farm for email addresses.

Many people just hit FORWARD and send the email to a whole stack of their contacts... These contacts then go into the body of the email when the next person hits FORWARD... etc... I got one the other day that had 93 (yes, I counted them) email addresses in the body of the email, of which I was one... There are people out there who farm these addresses and SELL Them on to spam list makers to use as 'live' email addresses.

These are then used to send spam to, and send viruses to. They are also used as a good source of people who's computers to HACK into, as if they're dumb enough to send on 100 other people's email addresses, they're probably also too dumb to have decent firewalls, etc on their computers.

Usually people who send these to me get a fairly terse email in return with a little 'tutorial' on how to DELETE addresses from the body of the email, and how to use BCC (Blind Carbon Copy)... Grrr...

I use AVG free antivirus software and have never had a problem.

SMS, I just had my laptop reformatted as it was full of crud. Mostly temp and update files, but, I never know quite what to delete, so I figured clean start! Computer was still under warranty (by 3 weeks!) so the ASUS service centre in Brisbane reformatted it for me and reinstalled the basics for FREE. (Gotta LOVE that ASUS service!!!).

Oh, if you DO get one of those emails saying doom on you, a good site to check it at is www.snopes.com It's the Urban Legends site, where you can check whether emails are hoaxes. It makes good reading, too

Anyway, this is a great topic for people who use forums and other internet sites, especially at Xmas, when our guard may be down a little.

Thanks Jacin! and THANKS AJ and SMS for the GREAT info!

asy.

PS: SMS, I envy your 1T drive, mine's only 500Gb, it was my Xmas pressie LAST year from my brother! I regularly (at LEAST monthly) dump my entire 80Gb laptop drive onto it, coz I was robbed last year and lost my Laptop with all the data, VERY painful...

[sundaymorningstaple]

AJ, I also used the other programs you mentioned like spybot, etc. Been using 'em for a couple of years. I have AVG installed on my sons PC instead of Norton.

Another nifty little program that I've used with great success (freeware) is PC Inspector's "FileRecovery" so if you have a crashed HDD it works a treat as long as the crash wasn't a physical crash.

Asy, I love "Snopes"! Been also using it for years (great when moderating a huge forum like mine up here). It's on my smart bookmarks toolbar in FF as well as CBL Lookup (for locating spammer IP addys).

Also agree on the click here for a free anti-virus check! Also, please, anybody reading this, be aware of phishing problems. No Bank or other financial institution will ask you to verify any password or account information via email. Same with order information from places you don't know and returned email messages. All of these are dangerous. If you are a FF user I would also suggest that you download the WOT (Web of Trust) extension.

As an additional word of caution, one should NEVER click on pop-up banners that scream in blinking, flashing, blinding colors that your PC is infected and you need to 'click' here to have it checked and then click here to get it removed.

And as far as other remarks are concerned.......

I just consider the source.

[shell]

If FF is Firefox, I removed mine because it was continually shutting down on me for no reason??
I tried uninstalling and re installing a few times -to no avail so I got the sh1ts & got rid of it!
Pity, because I did like it better than IE.
Shell

[Annabelle Joy]

Shell, you could try either:
Netscape http://browser.netscape.com/releases or
Opera http://www.opera.com/

AJ

[shell]

Thanks AJ.

[Jeannie]

My son keeps telling me to get an APPLE, he says Macs dont have those problems.. lol... I am serioulsy thinking about it..