ספיי ועיר - וויירוס - היידזשעקינג

The pitfalls of pornography

I fix and build computers on the side of my normal nine-to-five job. I also clean out spyware and viruses--either the easy way or the hard way.

This woman brought her computer in, and it was obvious her husband liked his porn. She had no idea, and I suppose he explained it as standard pop-ups or a bad Internet connection. The computer contained more than 2,000 pieces of spyware and seven Trojan horses. It had more than 70 programs loaded on it and took more than 20 minutes to boot up.

I finally got it all out by using a combination of Spybot - Search & Destroy, Ad-Aware, and AVG Anti-Virus. Furthermore, I had to use a Knoppix live CD to delete files that just wouldn't give up.

The final bill came to $225. The lady screamed until I told her I would put everything back the way it was if she didn't pay.

--Steevo
Colorado, U.S.A.

Adult Web sites are notorious havens for spyware components. It's amazing that more of their hot-and-bothered customers don't know this (or don't care enough to be dissuaded). Along with the pop-up adware on the PC you describe above, the computer could easily have gotten dialers and spyware components the way it was being used. The scourge of spyware does seem to be good for the computer-technician business, however.

--Download.com editors

VERY IMPORTANT WARNING
>
> Please Be Extremely Careful especially if using internet mail such as
> Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on.
>
> This information arrived this morning from Microsoft and Norton.
> Please send it to everybody you know who accesses the Internet.
>
> You may receive an apparently harmless email with a Power Point
> presentation "Life is beautiful. pps".
>
> If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, and
> delete it immediately.
>
> if you open this file, a message will appear on your screen saying:
> "It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful", subsequently
> you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC and the person who sent it to you
> gain access to your
> name, e-mail and password.
>
> This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon.
> WE NEED TO DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO STOP THIS VIRUS. AOL has already
> confirmed the severity, and the antiviral Software's are not capable
> of destroying it. The virus has been created by a hacker who calls
> himself " life owner".
>
> PLEASE MAKE A COPY OF THIS EMAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS and PASS IT ON
> IMMEDIATELY