Just got hit by a virus. How has your day been?

Greetings.

I appear to have been hit by a virus yesterday.

I was chatting on Gmail, when suddenly all these web pages
started opening up at the rate of about 1 per second.

When I tried to close them, I got the message, Cannot close
program Doctor Watson Post Mortem Debugger.


So I just held the power button down until my computer shut off,
and that appears to have taken care of it.
(Also ran 3 hours of virus\spyware scans, to make sure thats its
gone.)

I was just wondering if this has happened to anyone else?

Thanks,

The Mighty WERDNA(Lord Of Darkness)

Did it find/remove anything?

It probably wasn't Gmail, most likely a dormant virus/or you got it only recently before checking your emails.

Like all the others... shy height :D

Dabz

happened to me about 18 months ago. Prior to that I didn't bother with antivirus. Malware bytes free app removed it and I've used Nod32 ever since. So far no problems. Only recall a virus being caught 2-5 times since then.

I saw that Apple now recommend having one or more virus checkers installed on their systems these days too.

All it found was a tracking cookie.

I think shutting the computer down quickly, and my dial up internet,
prevented it from downloading anything bad.

I use Norton Anitvirus, which works great, and spy-bot search and
destroy, which also works great, and is free!

So, how's life in the stone age? o.O

Is it safe?..

WERDNA wrote:


Is "chatting on Gmail" street slang for "surfing porn sites"?

WERDNA: You're the first person I've heard said Norton Antivirus works great. :) Your computer got infected, so it can't be that great. I've also had friends who were unable to un-install Norton, and wound up reinstalling Windows to get rid of it. Because of this I tend to view Norton Antivirus as a VIRUS itself. :)

Ew.

I haven't had a virus in years...... Must be doing something right... like staying away from shady pr0n sites (notice i said shady, cause staying away from pr0n sights is just suicide!)

It also makes you lose your eye site. ;)

One question - I sent an email the other day which included a number of small gif files (they were bulletpoint graphics within the email).

The recipient complained that my email contained a virus but after thoroughly checking my pc and the email in question (on a separate pc as well), I came to the conclusion it was probably one of the small gif images that was throwing up a false positive.

Would this be likely?

Madjack: Yes.

My work email signature contains a small .bmp file (company logo). I sent an email the other day to a company I've not dealt with before, and got an email straight back (automatic) with the subject "Warning: E-mail viruses detected". The body of the message was as follows:


Not quite "E-mail viruses detected", eh? Not Impressed (especially since I was only sending an email because their web-based "Contact Us" page was b0rked (404 error) and the mailto: link for their email address on their front page had a typo in it).

?

Whats wrong with Norton?

I will admit that I had a lot of trouble updating my subscription, but
since then its been working great!

It blocks virus's all the time!
(And no, not because I'm on porn sites.)
(Virus's just attack my computer sometimes, and norton always blocks
them.)

GFK,

'and my dial up interne't

'So, how's life in the stone age? '


LOL. It sucks, but I don't really have the option to get anything but
dial up.


The Mighty WERDNA(Lord Of Darkness)
; By the way. I was just wondering as long as were on the topic.
:Can you right a virus using Blitz?
;I have no intention of doing so, I was just wondering if you could.
:Simply out of couriosity.

Yes you can WRITE anything you wish (given the right skills). Blitz is a programming language after all..

This thread is full of grammar mishaps!

I got fired, the company I worded for is bankrupt, and the CEO fled the country with 500 million Danish wooden money. So a lot worse than yours I imagine.

Well that certainly fits the definition of a bad day, FlameDuck! Sorry to hear you got fired.

Your visiting the wrong sites. The ladies on mine are very pleasing to the eye ;o)

[quote http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=81867#922316]Your visiting the wrong sites[/quote]

Looks like the sight/site thing went right over your head. :/

[edit] ^^^it'd be massively handy if you could do that!

Sorry to hear that Flameduck!

Out of interest, who were the company and what was your role there? I'm assuming it was programming related?

Damn!

If you are referring to Danish Kroner, then www.xe.com calculates that (500,000,000) as just over £58,000,000 (or just under $86,000,000).

You're saying that the CEO fled with that amount of money? Surely this is some kind of record and will be in the news?

Or maybe Flamey is just a big flaming liar!

@Gfk: Seconded!!

IT Factory A/S. Senior developer.

Yes. Stein Bagger, currently wanted for embezzlement and fraud, fled the country with approximately 500.000.000,- DKK. He was last seen in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Well over here it has been. I can't vouch for the news services in your country.

Or maybe the American news media is useless? There are lots of possibilities.

What goes through some dudes head to make him steal 500.000.000 - $86,000,000 from his company and then do a runner?

Where on earth could he hide where people wont realise that he has all that money and that he is that dude?

Wow, This should have been on the news!

That sucks flame duck losing your job :(

I'm really sorry to hear that!


Hope they catch your moron CEO.
And I agree with Amon. With all that money, and if hes all over the
news over there, he probably won't get far ^_^


Well good luck to you getting back on your feet!
I hope things work out for you.


WERDNA

Damn, sorry to hear you were affected by that, FlameDuck. I was only reading about this story earlier, but I didn't realize then that anyone here was affected. They said 85 million dollars in the story I read, so I guess XE.com is about right.

job front :(
but does that mean your finally out of that 'immaterial rights'/soul/first born clause :)

@ Gfk

Dam you!

Sorry to hear your outta a job FlameDuck

Amon wrote:


It takes guts, that's for sure. It's both shocking and impressive.


Oh, plenty of places. Somewhere eastern, perhaps. China? Taiwan? South Korea? Or somewhere European, like Romania?

@ WERDNA



The question should be "What's right with Norton !"...

1) It takes control of your PC.

2) Iv'e lost count of the amount of times I have had people call me saying "HELP !. My computer has ground to a halt.", and then it's an absolute pig when it comes to removing it.

3) It wouldn't supprise me if Norton planted viruses, in order to scare people into buying there crappy product.

4) I would feel safer leaving my bank card and pin number sitting next to an ATM, than have Norton on my PC.

As you probably guessed by now, I think that Norton is a complete load of anal excrement !

I second the view that Norton is crapware. It may do a reasonable job of detecting and removing malware, but the way it achieves its goals is intrusive, inefficient and grossly undesirable.

Once it became the AV software of choice to bundle with new PC's, standards slipped because priorities changed.

If you want good paid-for protection, get NOD32 or F-Secure. They are two of the best. Most people (those behind NAT) generally only need their standalone AV software, rather than the full-on security suite.

Ok....

Thanks for the tips on NOD32 and F-Secure.

I was unaware that Norton sucked so much,

I've never really had a problem with it!


So your advice would be to ditch Norton, and get NOD32 or F-Secure?
How much do those two cost for a subscription?
I'm paying 50$ for Norton.

Thanks if you can answer, and I must repeat, that that sucks
FlameDuck what happend to you! I really hope they catch the guy.

Did someone say Norton? I'm starting to feel nauseous...

WERDNA...

Try AVG. It may not be the best, but it's still very good, and it's FREE for personal use.

And it's a million times better then Norton.

AVG have made some recent, serious errors. Breaking Windows rather grandly by identifying important system files as virus-infected.

You get what you pay for.

NOD32 starts at about £25 but you get big discounts the more licenses you buy at once and for the longer the licence covers (1, 2 or 3 years).

F-Secure starts at about £20.

Of the two, my personal preference would be NOD32. Not based on any empirical evidence, just my opinion.

I do put AVG on my friend's computers, unless I can persuade them to pay for NOD32. I don't run any security software myself, but attacks are starting to lack the opt-in activity usually required to become infected, so I'm going to buy a new NOD32 licence this weekend.

Just in case.

Nod32 Sounds good. Lol, its so much cheaper than Norton!

I'll check out their site when I get a chance.


Also, what is your opinion of SpyBot Search And Destroy?
It being free is cool, but is it very good at finding Spyware?

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware has a good reputation.

I would have to agree that Norton Internet Security is getting worse with every new release. I just spent 4 hours configuring NIS 2009 (took 2 min with 2008) to allow me to run files off the NAS ( and I still don't know how I did it ) and I gave up trying to get the same result with the wireless laptop. Looks like I will be looking else where for a security suite in future.

Windows own firewall seems sufficient for most needs. If I wasn't hiding behind NAT though, I'd probably go with a paid-for firewall program, just for the fine-grain control it would give.

I'm on a 30-day trial of NOD32 again. Despite me not having security software on my wireless laptop for the past 6+ months, a scan revealed no nasties.

He just turned himself in. In LA.

Well yes thankfully, and it seems like a few job opportunities are opening up too, so it's not all bad. Still sucks getting fired up to Christmas.

That's so funny. I sold a cheap-o laptop a few years ago, to a guy who "only needed to be able to play flash". So i figured the laptop I had was plenty good. I installed a fresh Windows 98, made sure it played flash okay out-of-the-box and shipped it off to him. I got one mean call a week later saying how the laptop was underpowered, and he wanted his money back. I told him that I'd made sure it played flash animations back perfectly before shipping it off to him, he told me he'd taken it to a "computer expert" to get it prepared and it couldn't do anything at all. I agreed to give him his money back, and he returned the laptop. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the "computer expert" had removed, and then incorrectly re-inserted the extra 64MB RAM module, so the machine only had 16MB of memory left, then as I started it up, I noticed this "expert" had also installed Norton, and just as the angry man in the other end of the line had said, the computer was practically useless. I guess he should have used a proper computer expert.

Consider this story another vote for NOD32/Eset Security Suite. Particularly over Norton. In fact you're probably better off with nothing at all over Norton.

1 Glad he turned himself in FlameDuck!

2 I'm really glad that things seem to be working out all right for you,
good luck getting one of those jobs!

3 LOL. Way to go mister 'Computer Expert'. I know who I'm getting
next time I need my computer fixed ^_^

And I shall definetly get Nod32. sounds like a great program.

Expert = his mate next door who once managed to change a fuse without ending up hospitalised.

didnt someone here once have an annecdone where the 'computer expert' ended up being some sub teenage kid from next door?

I was fairly confident with electronics and computers at age 12, but I probably wouldn't have messed too much with a laptop. Not even sure they were around when I was 12.