Viruses - Do you get them and why?

kandyfloss

I recieved some gardening gift vouchers through the post from a gardening forum where I had won ist prize in their Christmas photo comp.I put in the website to see where I could use the vouchers and a whole list came up so I clicked on one of them.
It opened up to a porno site and when I tried to get out of it by clicking on the x nothing happened.My AVG kicked straight in and started going through the scanning process.I quickly rang my husband to ask him what I needed to do and he said to just close everything down and not to click on anything that looked suspicious.

I think it is one of my friends that is unwittingly passing them on because she sent a virus through to one of her friends a couple of months ago and we naerly had a Trojan one come in around the same time.She does so much surfing on the net and enters loads of comps and leaves one of her email addresses everywhere.

Since this virus was stopped last week my laptop has slowed down quiet a lot and I ma not sure if the virus had anything to do with it,or what I can do to rectify the problem

shazamaca

robt wrote: »

Would seeing that on MSN not make you suspicious? I would certainly not click the link until I had confirmed the contact intentionally sent it to me.

Thats easy to say but when it comes from one of your contacts and you are expecting something you just click it as I did. Silly maybe. But its done now and with the help of Alfonso I'm hoping to get rid of it - see my thread

Zahc

It's interesting that you (we) trust our AV progs so much. At the risk of being deluged by disparaging remarks AVG isn't fool proof (nor are any of the others for that matter).
To say you haven't had any viruses really means that your AV prog hasn't found any, not that you don't have any. Not all viruses wreck your OS or put a pic of boobs on your screen (no idea where that came from; possibly cider!) but a lot will sit in the background and report back to it's originator.
Recently I installed Kaspersky onto a mate's PC, previously running AVG free version, and it found no less than 4 nasties lurking despite the fact that it [ the PC ] was running fine, though the internet connection was slowing down.
Anyhow, that's my two penneth.

Zahc

robt_2

Zahc wrote: »

It's interesting that you (we) trust our AV progs so much. At the risk of being deluged by disparaging remarks AVG isn't fool proof (nor are any of the others for that matter).
To say you haven't had any viruses really means that your AV prog hasn't found any, not that you don't have any. Not all viruses wreck your OS or put a pic of boobs on your screen (no idea where that came from; possibly cider!) but a lot will sit in the background and report back to it's originator.
Recently I installed Kaspersky onto a mate's PC, previously running AVG free version, and it found no less than 4 nasties lurking despite the fact that it [ the PC ] was running fine, though the internet connection was slowing down.
Anyhow, that's my two penneth.

Zahc

I'm aware of that, I'm by no means a novice, I have been working with computers for 15 years now .

robt_2

shazamaca wrote: »

Thats easy to say but when it comes from one of your contacts and you are expecting something you just click it as I did. Silly maybe. But its done now and with the help of Alfonso I'm hoping to get rid of it - see my thread

It is easy for me to say because it is what I would personally do This was the point of the thread - to see how people are getting them.

Glad you are getting it sorted .

weegie.geek

robt wrote: »

My word, I think I'm going to faint, I'm going to agree with a whole post of yours

Be careful about agreeing with me, it's a slippery slope.

For the people who DO get the odd virus (or the people who find themselves in the position of cleaning up the infected computers of clients/friends/family), where do you think you/they got them? Where did you go wrong?

There's a wealth of info out there on the net about how to be safer, and Windows hassles you if you don't have a firewall or AV set up, so how do the viruses still manage to propagate? It baffles me.

CHR15

You can play with a Virus Test file HERE.

I used to use this a few years ago to demonstrate. AVG picks it up okay.

note: Only play if you are happy with what you are doing!!

superscaper

weegie.geek wrote: »

Be careful about agreeing with me, it's a slippery slope.

I see group hugs already on the horizon :eek:

Zahc

robt wrote: »

I'm aware of that, I'm by no means a novice, I have been working with computers for 15 years now .

No insults intended or implied; just an observation that the great unwashed (me included) are happy if our 'defences' tell us we're all fine and dandy regardless of the fact that those defences may not be up to the job.

Zahc

weegie.geek

We'll get viruses one way or the other.