Facebook Virus

[happylabs]

Yesterday I received an email on Facebook from my niece. It was a link to open a video. I know better than to open an attachment in my regular email but I didn't realize you could get a virus from a Facebook email. I know, how stupid of me!!!

Anyway, turns out my niece did not send me an email. I really do not understand how these things work but live and learn!

Whatever the virus is, it will not let me run Norton and it also will not let me go to Microsoft website to get help. This is on my laptop computer at home.

I know we have some computer savvy people here. Can anyone help me out with this? I am on my computer at work right now and am limited at what sites I can visit.

Thanks!

[MoonandBean]

That stinks! Yes, FB is chalk full of viruses and they usually come in video's. If anyone ever gets a video in an email, don't open it. Not to be crude but they are usually titled something like "wait til you see how good your ass looks in this video"...LOL! Somehow, these hackers get into someone's addresses and sends emails out to all of their friends on FB. I have had many sent to me. I haven't gotten sucked in that way but one time, I clicked on something (I don't even remember what) and a big message came up that said "you have been infected by the trojan virus". There was a button that said "click scan to have it removed" so I did and whammo...the virus was installed. I brought my computer to an IT friend of mine to fix it. Of course, he yelled at me for clicking on something I wasn't sure of. If that ever happens again, I know to just shut the computer down. Actually, it did happen again and I just shut down and when I came back online, everything was fine. In that case, it was a virus known as "malware" where they are actually trying to sell you an anti-virus program to remove the virus they installed. But in other cases, it just seems that people install these viruses just for the fun of it. Aren't humans fun? I prefer dogs

[MoonandBean]

Here is my original post in case there is any good info in there for you, Helen.

http://petoftheday.com/talk/showthread.php?t=152834

[pomtzu]

Can you do a system restore to a date previous to when you got the virus?

I had one similar to MoonandBeam's about a month ago - said I was infected with a trojan virus and click to scan to remove - and I hadn't even opened anything in an email. Must have caught it from some website, but don't have a clue since I am super careful where I go. I couldn't get anything to work, and a porn site kept popping up - I thought I was toasted for sure.

My son did a system restore back to Jan 1st, and that took care of it. Now everytime this puppy gets a little slow or acts somewhat funky, I get paranoid about it, thinking something is lurking in here. But, so far, so good, and no more problems. This is just another reason I stay away from the social networks.

Hope you get rid of whatever you have!!!!!

[wombat2u2004]

Oh no !!!! Facebook is a haven for stuff like that.
I don't have the computer skills to help you out at all....sorry about that.
But, if you can find out the name of the particular virus you've got, you may be able to do a search and find a site that will instruct you how to get rid of it.
Can't Norton identify it for you ????
If not, you could possibly download the free trial version of AVG, and run a scan ??? That may at least identify the little beastie.
Best of luck with that one mate.
Wom

[kokopup]

I got the Porn virus off of facebook myself. It is malware that prevents you from accessing anything other that the bogus virus removal software. There may have been a better solution, but I had to finally reformat my harddrive and reinstall everything from scratch. I still haven't fully recovered. The guy that sent me the malware actually infected many of my friends since we have a lot of mutual friends. If you get an email from Facebook do not open it from you mail. Go to facebook to see if it is OK to open. Do not open any video files. The name of the video file is usually a dead give away that it shouldn't be opened.

[happylabs]

Thanks everyone for the advice. I read the instructions that were posted in that previous post and it sounds complex. I may just end up taking the laptop to the Geeks at Best Buy where I purchased my laptop. Ugh...$165. That is a huge price to pay for my stupidity. I don't think this has ever happened to me before. Live and learn!

[Catty1]

TRY THIS FIRST:

Restart your computer and press F8 just after it starts up again.

This will give you startup options.

Choose "Safe Mode with Networking"

Once you are in (icons will look big and weird) get on the net and go to www.malwarebytes.org

On the left hand side, choose the blue Download Free Version.

Save to desktop and double click to install. There will be a moment or two when it appears to not be there - but finally the scan window will open. Short Scan will be selected. Leave it at that and start the scan. It will clean out all kinds of crap and viruses. It is one of my basic cleanup tools.

The other is Spybot Search and Destroy - but do Malware first.

This could take a couple of hours total, but will save you the drive and money!

[happylabs]

TRY THIS FIRST:

Restart your computer and press F8 just after it starts up again.

This will give you startup options.

Choose "Safe Mode with Networking"

Once you are in (icons will look big and weird) get on the net and go to www.malwarebytes.org

On the left hand side, choose the blue Download Free Version.

Save to desktop and double click to install. There will be a moment or two when it appears to not be there - but finally the scan window will open. Short Scan will be selected. Leave it at that and start the scan. It will clean out all kinds of crap and viruses. It is one of my basic cleanup tools.

The other is Spybot Search and Destroy - but do Malware first.

This could take a couple of hours total, but will save you the drive and money!

I will try it when I get home. Thanks very much!!!!

[wombat2u2004]

TRY THIS FIRST:

Restart your computer and press F8 just after it starts up again.

This will give you startup options.

Choose "Safe Mode with Networking"

Once you are in (icons will look big and weird) get on the net and go to www.malwarebytes.org

On the left hand side, choose the blue Download Free Version.

Save to desktop and double click to install. There will be a moment or two when it appears to not be there - but finally the scan window will open. Short Scan will be selected. Leave it at that and start the scan. It will clean out all kinds of crap and viruses. It is one of my basic cleanup tools.

The other is Spybot Search and Destroy - but do Malware first.

This could take a couple of hours total, but will save you the drive and money!

Wow....I'm going to save this one for sure.

[Seravieve]

The people I work for have both gotten viruses on their computers recently from Facebook too. They both had to reformat the computers. It some how blocked all internet access.. so there was no way to fix it I guess. One of the computers was a business computer.. so there was a lot of important stuff lost. How annoying that people take pride in making these viruses.. I'll never understand their train of thought.

[Catlady711]

Newest one on FB is the bunch of new groups claiming to get your old home page layout back. Catch is you "have to invite ALL your friends, then register with a mobile phone number".

The thing is all you're doing is spamming your friends for them, and the 'registering' signed you up for a series of texts or surveys to be sent to your phone with a charge of anywhere from $6 per text to a flat $19.99 per month.

Oh and the "gold member" thing is a similar scam. Avoid both types of groups.