Just wanted to give everybody a head's up on the latest attemp at catching a virus.
Watch out for any email that appears to be 'card' from an old friend, schoolmate, and things like that.
Alot of the email messages will look like they are coming from the popular 'Greeting Cards' site, or 'ClassMates' site.
It will have a link to 'retrieve' your card and once you click on that it will give you several nasty viruses...
Another one that is coming around again is the old 'pop-up' message that looks like it is from microsoft security center. It was quite popular a few years back, but kind of faded out once the anti-virus programs adjusted to it. But recently it has started making the rounds with a new twist.
And you need to be REALLY CAREFUL ABOUT THIS or it can be very, very annoying..What happens is usually while you are surfing the web, you will get a pop up that looks like it is from micro soft and it will say something like, 'Microsoft security warning', 'Microsoft security system has detected a possible threat to your system....known threat is attempting to place software onto your system'...
Now here is the way that they set the hook..It will have a link, that will say something like this: Click here to visit the mirco soft security center to protect your system.....
Now, at this point most people will do one of two things..They will click the link, and a virus will be downloaded,,or two they will click the little 'X' in the top right of the pop-up (thinking that this is just a bunch of bull) to close the window...
Thats the double whammy! When you click either the link or the 'X' to close the window,, a virus will download..
And YES, I am one of the dummies who clicked the 'X' to try and close the window on the pop-up. The sad part is that I always have my popup blocker on, except for several sites that I normally use. I was on a B2B site when this popped up..I automatically assumed that if I clicked the link that I was going to be given some sort of sales pitch or something of that nature, so I tried to just close the window..Big mistake..
I normally have spyware, spyblocker, and two anti virus programs running all the time, none of them caught it...
This thing, kept changing my homepage every 2 minutes, to which everytime it attempted to, I got a real security warning saying someone was trying to change it, and did I wish to allow access for it to be changed..I would click no, and two minutes later it would start all over again....
Meanwhile, it puts this flashing little bright orange skull and crossbones smily on my toolbar to look at...At this point I'm getting so many popups from all kinds of chinese wholesale sites that I cant close em fast enough to see what my avg virus program is doing..I'v got everything running but nothing is helping....
It won't let me shut down the machine, so I finally had to unplug it...Called my computer tech guru brother in law,,,he comes over brings it back up in some kinda weird mode,,punches in some further weird phrases and all was well....
He advice to me was...'Yeah,,You don't wanna do that'...
Anyway be aware out there guys... :