vpFREE2 Forums

Virus Warnings

#1

Virus Report

On Saturday, out of the blue, my computer was invaded by a very
bad virus, which could be a toxic relative of the malware
nuisance pop-ups that have been discussed in this thread. My
computer speed dropped drastically and I was unable to open new
files or programs, except for a couple of minutes immediately after
a re-boot. My computer was unusable.

The attack centered around several different, persistent pop-up
boxes from someone called "Antivirus Live" saying that my
computer was infected and that they could fix it for me. I could
close the boxes, but they would reopen almost immediately.

After several frustrating hours of trying to find and fix the
problem, I did a "system restore" (my Windows XP Pro O/S offers
this option) to an earlier date before the virus was on my
computer. The "system restore" seems to have eliminated my virus.

I don't know how or where I got the virus. I haven't been using
real time protection (I am now), but never opened questionable
links or attachments and scanned my computer frequently.

#2

Unfortunately, it's been 15+ years since the "don't open questionable links/attachments" worked well on PCs. On Macs it works fairly well in 2010.

Still it's decent advice for PCs, it's just not good *enough*.

1) There are too many viruses which only need to show up in a preview screen. Even trusted sites occasionally post virus-infected files.

2) Consider cut/pasting all weblinks in e-mails (to see what the real address is into your browser. Possibly tighten your browser security before/after using the link. Yes it's a pain. Maybe expand tinyURLs before going to visit them. (Nasty: Visit questionable URLs on some library public computer....)

3) Regularly visit (e.g. weekly) security update sites for PC Viruses - even more often if you visit networks in colleges or companies where you can be exposed to lots of different computers.

4) Backups, backups (known as "checkpoint" and "rollback" in the database world). I'm glad to hear you had older copies of your stuff.

Good luck!
Mitchell

ยทยทยท

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "vpFREE Administrator" <vpfreeadmin@...> wrote:

I don't know how or where I got the virus. I haven't been using
real time protection (I am now), but never opened questionable
links or attachments and scanned my computer frequently.