The laptop has a spyware infection and security is compromised can you help please

katies_mum

Hi, my daughter hadn`t been on the laptop for a few days when it happened, so can`t blame her. I had my emails open, was on trip advisor and had been looking on Amazon and it just happened (honest i don`t do anything iffy..well not knowingly).

Not been infected 10 times! think thats a bit over the top, I admit there have been a few virus problems over the past 12 months but nothing compares to what happened yesterday that was pretty scary.

alanrowell

katies_mum wrote: »

I admit there have been a few virus problems over the past 12 months but nothing compares

I've been using PCs since the mid 1980's - I now have several in the home for various purposes. To date the only infections I've had were ones that were detected immediately. I don't use ANY paid for software to protect my machines.

The best advice I can give is to always ensure that your computer is fully up to date at all times by manually running Windows Update and to have a decent firewall and the best free anti-virus at all times. If you have multiple computers in the home then use different combinations of software

tyllwyd

This virus tried to get to my computer - and I was nowhere near any dodgy sites and have antivirus software running. It downloaded itself without permission and started to run, but luckily the account I use is not an administrator account, so when it tried to install itself, windows asked me for the administrator password so I was able to stop it at that point. We ran a virus scan, which picked up and was able to delete the files from the temporary internet files, and then we used the system restore feature to restore the computer to how it had been earlier in the day, to be on the safe side.

So my top tips are - make sure that the account you use to surf the internet does not have administrator permissions, watch out for fake security software warnings and never ever click on them, use Task Manager to close them down, and check that you know how to use system restore.

katies_mum

Laptop seems to be running fine (fingers crossed) thank you all.

Just one little problem to which I`m hoping there is an easy solution. Any documents I need to open ie attached to an email are opening but just showing a lot of gibberish and not what they should say! I can open the stuff in my docs ok. Please might anyone have any ideas? I`ve checked adobe reader is up to date and also done another scan with Secunia to see if anything else needed updating.

Thanks

davb

Sounds like it's viewing in plain text. There is usually a setting to change it - what email client are you using.

tyllwyd

davb wrote: »

Sounds like it's viewing in plain text. There is usually a setting to change it - what email client are you using.

... and how does the name of the document end (is it pdf, doc, zip or something else?)

katies_mum

When you say email client do you mean hotmail which is how I send my emails?

the document just says 1 attachment (38.8KB) and document is in red to click. Upto Saturday when i had the problems I would click on this and it would open. Now I get a box at the bottom of the page asking me if I want to open, save, cancel. When I click on open I get another box headed file conversion that asks me to select the encoding that makes the document readable and languages to choose from.
I have tried clicking on all 3 boxes windows default MS dos other encoding but still gibberish.

It is a document thats sent from `work` so I know its ok and I did read this last week.

Hope this info helps. Many thanks

macman

Just because it's from work how do you know that it's not infected or malicious? A lot of company systems are infected. I would make a policy of saving it to your desktop and then scanning it from there.

katies_mum

Hi
Its an invoice, I get them weekly/monthly and they always come the same way..I click open and print (usually)

katies_mum

I`ve just saved it and tried to open it and its exactly the same - it says its a PDF file if that helps