MoonandBean
05-15-2009, 09:35 AM
Hi friends,
I am posting to warn you of a computer virus that ruined my morning and made me late for work. I was playing on facebook for 2 minutes this morning while waiting for coffee to finish brewing (serves me right, I should have been playing with Sunny...LOL!) and a very official message that looked like it was from "windows" popped up and said "your computer is at risk and has been infected with the Trojan virus". I don't remember the sequence of events but I did end up clicking on the "run scan" button and then ended up with this "Personal Antivirus" program along the icons on the bottom of my computer. I realized it was a SCAM when I was asked to enter credit card info. and "googled" it and saw dozens of stories that sounded exactly the same. I ran my own antivirus scan and have no viruses. I feel stupid for clicking but people have said once it pops up, there's no way to prevent it from running (?). I can't uninstall the program the regular way and am looking into ways to remove it. One of my co-workers gave me a "spyware removal program" so I will look into that. I know I'm not "infected" with a real virus but this "personal antivirus" program feels pretty virusy in it's own right in that it constantly pops up and gives warnings and is very annoying. I had my pop up blocker turned on and I do have webroot spysweeper so I"m not sure why this happened. I don't know if facebook is at all involved or just what I happened to be doing at the time it appeared. I just wanted to warn all my friends NOT to click on anything if you get this pop up. Shut down your computer. Unplug it. And then re-boot. Hopefully, I can prevent some of you from a ruined cup of coffee :)
Deb
I am posting to warn you of a computer virus that ruined my morning and made me late for work. I was playing on facebook for 2 minutes this morning while waiting for coffee to finish brewing (serves me right, I should have been playing with Sunny...LOL!) and a very official message that looked like it was from "windows" popped up and said "your computer is at risk and has been infected with the Trojan virus". I don't remember the sequence of events but I did end up clicking on the "run scan" button and then ended up with this "Personal Antivirus" program along the icons on the bottom of my computer. I realized it was a SCAM when I was asked to enter credit card info. and "googled" it and saw dozens of stories that sounded exactly the same. I ran my own antivirus scan and have no viruses. I feel stupid for clicking but people have said once it pops up, there's no way to prevent it from running (?). I can't uninstall the program the regular way and am looking into ways to remove it. One of my co-workers gave me a "spyware removal program" so I will look into that. I know I'm not "infected" with a real virus but this "personal antivirus" program feels pretty virusy in it's own right in that it constantly pops up and gives warnings and is very annoying. I had my pop up blocker turned on and I do have webroot spysweeper so I"m not sure why this happened. I don't know if facebook is at all involved or just what I happened to be doing at the time it appeared. I just wanted to warn all my friends NOT to click on anything if you get this pop up. Shut down your computer. Unplug it. And then re-boot. Hopefully, I can prevent some of you from a ruined cup of coffee :)
Deb