Careful About Those E-Mails

[hausdok]

Hi All,

So, yesterday I received an email that looked like it had come from my brother's wife. Since I've only gotten one other email from her ever, I was pleasantly surprised. I clicked on the email and she said she'd taken some pictures of the kids and included a link to what she said was a photosharing site.

I clicked on the link 'cuz I didn't have any reason to distrust her email and it took me to a hard-core porn site. WTF!!! I realized I'd been had, so I hit the close window button right away so nothing would attach to my computer. Too late, as soon as I hit that close button, a screen with a big official looking blue FBI Emblem flashes on and says that my computer has been locked for viewing either copyrighted intellectual property that has been pirated or for viewing illegal child pornography. The message informed me that I was now subject to a mandatory fine that I would have to pay by going down to a local store and sending in the fine via Green Dot or something like that before my computer would be unlocked. It then gave me instructions for how to go about paying the $200 fine. It was a well put together page and looked very genuine and official.

I have to confess I was pretty startled and riled by it; thinking that the FBI could somehow lock my computer and take $200 out of my pocket for something I didn't intentionally do. Then I noticed a couple of syntax errors in the notice and the fact that they wrote the $200 fine this way - 200$$ - ha!

Realizing it was some kind of virus, I reached over and killed power to the computer at the wall, waited five minutes, turned the power on and then rebooted in safe mode. It didn't seem to be there, so I returned to normal mode and bang it was back and locked my screen and keyboard again. I killed power to the computer again, went upstairs, logged onto the net from my wife's computer and then go the emergency 24-hour support number for my computer security service and gave them a call.

I wasn't ten seconds into telling the lady who answered what it was when she started describing it to me and said that they'd been inundated with calls from folks who are getting the thing on their computers. She then talked me through powering up and logging back on in safe networking mode and then she accessed my computer by remote control, told me to stay off the computer while they got rid of whatever it is and a few minutes later a teck logged onto my computer remotely and went to work. The thing got on my computer at about 10:23 am. by the time she'd taken over my computer remotely it was 11:45. I left for the afternoon job at about 1:45 and they finished up cleaning the computer at nearly 3:00 PM.

They could not provide me an explanation for how it managed to get past the virus protection software they'd installed on my computer and which is updated every 48 hours; but they assure me that it's gone now and won't get back in again. I sure hope not.

Jeez, it's getting so that when I receive an email from someone I know and trust with an attachment of any sort, I have to email them and ask them if they'd sent me an email with an attachment and wait for the answer before I can respond anymore. What a pain in the ass!

Hell, if these cretins can lock our computers like that, why can't the danged government create a program that can be used to attack the compouters of the cretins and lock them up and make them useless?

Be careful about opening those emails from everyone now folks, you never know when the one you are certain is a friend will turn out to be one of these cretins.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[Chad Fabry]

Yeah, I got it too but, not from a porn site, I got it searching for concrete counter top videos. Combo Fix got rid of it and I disabled scripts in Mozilla.

[Marc]

It's in the news.

Sorry you got hit Mike. It's aggravating.

Marc

[kurt]

Harsh reality, but one simply can't click on links in an email anymore.

Since Yahoo got hacked, there's about 75 million usernames and passwords out there creating all sorts of problems. When bunches of folks in here kept telling me my computer was infected, it was actually the Yahoo hack.

One of my main arguments for going Mac was less malware, although that's changing too.

There's going to be some form of meltdown coming; it's unavoidable. The infrastructure is outdated and the operating systems are so antiquated and incapable of preventing viruses, it can't hold up.

[Tom Raymond]

My wife spent the last three days fixing my computer, she downloaded a virus by clicking on a blog link from a search page. If I wasn't looking over her shoulder when she did it I'd have insisted she was looking at unseemly stuff.

I don't get the thrill of planting these bugs. If I were inclined to fook with someone I'd want to see the reaction. It's pointless without it.

[John Kogel]

My wife spent the last three days fixing my computer, she downloaded a virus by clicking on a blog link from a search page. If I wasn't looking over her shoulder when she did it I'd have insisted she was looking at unseemly stuff.

I don't get the thrill of planting these bugs. If I were inclined to fook with someone I'd want to see the reaction. It's pointless without it.

It keeps geeks employed repairing and retrieving lost data.

It generates income for the software and antivirus dealers. Then there's the spyware. That stolen info is a source of income for a lot of people as well.

[Jim Baird]

I got a weirdo virus a while back that pretended to be an antivirus program that said my box was infected and I needed to buy a cure program. Was able to reboot in safe mode and run system restore there, but had to hurry.