Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

Spammers and virus writers go hand in hand these days. Spam typically comes from machines that have been hijacked by viruses that get installed by tricking users into running them. The preferred delivery method is by offering up an interesting spam email message that simply CANNOT BE IGNORED OR THE WORLD WILL END!!!1!

Here’s what it looks like to be a victim.

Sites like MSNBC, CNN, and Facebook are partly responsible for mis-training people into installing software to view their sometimes custom-designed streaming videos, after clicking links in emails notifying the email reader of some interesting update to the website.

If you get one of these spam emails, you CANNOT UNSUBSCRIBE. Just delete the message(s) and go on with your day. If you’ve installed the virus-video player, you may want to leave a comment to get some assistance with cleaning up your computer.

==

Just the other day I spoke with someone who had their email password “phished”. That means they responded to a spam email with their account username and password and other identifying information. This let a scammer log into the victim’s email account, change the password, and send messages to people in the address book asking them for money.

Antivirus software is generally crud. I say this as a computer programmer with a degree, and over a decade’s worth of experience in cleaning viruses off computers. I would never pay for antivirus software for my home computer (at work, possibly). In fact, I haven’t had to pay for AV software yet. I became jaded years ago while reading VMyths by Rob R. He confirmed what I suspected - that the AV update system model is broken, and not the best that programmers can offer customers.

Here are some free AV products (that aren’t always easy for novices to find):

• AVG Free - and yes it’s still free past May 2008, using their free Version 8.0. You just have to look past the Trial version.
• Avira AntiVir is also free.
• ClamWin is based on ClamAV for Linux.

Also required when using a free AV product, is a free Spyware detector/remover. Spyware is a mean (malicious) bit of softWARE that may not spread like a virus, but ruins your computer at least as well as a virus. Antivirus companies tend to charge for spyware detection (which is stupid, since spyware breaks a computer just as well as a virus, and it can be detected in much the same way as viruses are), and it’s how they convince more people to pay for “premium” products. Why bother? There are volunteers out there who don’t charge anything, and ask only for what you can afford to pay them at your discretion.

I’ve only had one virus infect any of my own computers or disks since I started back in 1984. (It’s possible some got through, and were never detected, but that’s VERY unlikely because they are usually easy to spot due to poor programming or intentional destruction/extortion/bragging caused by the well written ones). I’ve downloaded music and TV since the late 1990s using a variety of services, mostly P2P. And the only time a virus infected my computer, it was from surfing to a malicious webpage with an insecure version of Java installed on my computer. AVG detected it in an automated daily scan, and I was back to normal, feeling slightly more vulnerable, but in reality unscathed.

/End bragging

Continue Reading »