Fake Virus Alerts

[BookCat]

He wasn't suggesting it would close down the virus, just the pop-up boxes with the fake alerts which wanted me to download a virus-ridden program which, had I run, would have installed viruses on my pc. I think the scam was to tell you that you had malware and so needed the program.....which was a virus-package (Trojan). I didn't get any viruses because I didn't install the program.

[sadievan]

Originally Posted by dsvick

I can sympathize 100%, you were right, obviously, in being suspicious. The other big give away is the blinking flashing lights and numbers and warnings of impending doom.

I see those at work all the time, often enough that have a disk created specifically for it that has Malware bytes (http://www.malwarebytes.org/) and, for the really stuborn ones, combo-fix (http://www.combofix.org/) on it.

As your first line of defense, run malware bytes repeatedly until it comes back clean. If that does not solve it, I've not met one yet that combofix could not take care. Note that you may have to run them in safe mode since some of the malware will detect it when you run these, and other, recovery tools and virus scanners.

I like Malwarebytes too. My son in law had a bad one on his computer. At first it wouldn't let me even run Malwarebytes. Had to run it in Safe Mode and then it took care of it.

Carol

[sadievan]

For those of you using Firefox there is a really good add on called 'Adblock Plus'. Really blocks all the pop ups. I've been very happy with it.

Carol

[RolandD]

I spent five hours last night cleaning an obnoxious malware called 'System Tool' from a friend's brand new laptop. Now, even though Best Buy had put some crappy antivirus on there and I gave her a list of what programs to download to protect her computer, which she didn't, she managed to acquire it.

Oh, it did blue screen/memory dump when I tried ctrl/alt/del.

I browse with Chrome and set it to block pop-ups. I run with Spybot S&D, AVG Free, Ad-Aware, and Malwarebytes. They use very little system resources and I have never had anything get by them.

[MrPLD]

Imagine how much faster your machine could be and how less stressful life would be if we didn't have to deal with viruses/trojans and the accompanying AntiVirus/Trojan software bogging down the system.

[RolandD]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

Imagine how much faster your machine could be and how less stressful life would be if we didn't have to deal with viruses/trojans and the accompanying AntiVirus/Trojan software bogging down the system.

I have tried various flavors of Linux over the years. I don't care for Linux because of its various shortcomings for my use, but mainly for aesthetic reasons. I prefer programs to look polished and clean. I know this is shallow and petty, but that's how it is.

I am very particular about allocation of resources on my computer. If I had to use a resource hog like IE, I'd get rid of the protection and risk it. I'll guarantee that my experience is light years ahead of someone using IE and Norton.