Malware through competitions?

currysawcc

Hi everyone, I had a nasty shock whilst comping that lasted a couple of weeks and was wondering if anyone had experienced anything similar whilst comping.

A couple of weeks ago, all of a sudden my laptop wasn't working. Strangely, I wouldn't be able to go on any 'normal' websites, such as MSE or Superdrug for example, but could access Gmail, Facebook, Netflix, Youtube etc perfectly fine. We tried EVERYTHING to get rid of it, my boyfriend flushed my entire laptop, changed the DNS settings, wiped the cache from the browsers and all that other computer jargon that I don't really understand. Anyway, nothing happened, it was the same; thought it was time to get a new laptop as I couldn't get onto any of my university pages.

Sunday, I was on my boyfriend's computer (big fancy two monitor setup - a lot more impressive than my little laptop!) doing nothing but comping on MSE... when the same thing happened! All of a sudden I couldn't connect to any websites but Google related ones; Youtube, fine, but anything else, no! It couldn't be anything to do with his computer because it is new, and it wasn't the network or anything because my other housemates could use their technology fine, so we looked through the history and all I had been doing was entering competitions!

After a bit more digging, we found that in my apps (Windows 10) there were a couple of unknown things - stuff that seemed to have installed without my knowledge. I can't remember the names of them off the top of my head but I did not recognise them by name nor icon. After running a few malware scans they still appeared undetected so they were super sneaky. I would deem myself pretty savvy when it comes to dodgy looking links, emails, websites etc, so we thought perhaps something may have happened in the referral period - between clicking on a link and getting to a web page. I 100% trust the links on this website as I have been comping for months with no issue, and I believe every thread has to be moderated, so I'm really stumped!

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced a similar problem, or even any problems in general. If not, I hope this brings a bit of awareness just in case. :A

thingamaBob

currysawcc wrote: »

I 100% trust the links on this website as I have been comping for months with no issue, and I believe every thread has to be moderated, so I'm really stumped!

Well that's two mistakes for a start.
There is no moderation on MSE and you should not trust links 100%
Although experienced members may know about dodgy or suspect sites and comment accordingly there are many posts being made these days by people signing up and posting comps and other fairly new members immediately putting in working links for them. These could be coming from anywhere and link to anywhere.

Without knowing what sites you have linked to or what these mystery apps were, it's unlikely anyone can give any specific advice unless someone has had exactly the same problem.

Never click a link you are not sure of or at least wait to see if other people comment first.

mjm3346

currysawcc wrote: »

I 100% trust the links on this website as I have been comping for months with no issue, and I believe every thread has to be moderated, so I'm really stumped!

Firstly the forum is not moderated so as with any site treat links with caution although the vast majority are fine.

There are thousands of posts made on the forum every day, it would be impossible for someone to read them all. Also, if we were to read and approve every post, we might become responsible for any unlawful information within those posts.

We want to protect our users as much as we can, so we have a 'report-a-post' system (see How do I report an inappropriate post?). Only after going through this process are posts legally deemed as being published by the site.

Personally I have not had any "nasties" from this site although my virus protect sometimes advises against or even blocks some of the links. Some perfectly legitimate sites have 3rd party advertisements that they get paid to have but have no real control of so watch out for things like that.