ELLS wrote, "If you happen to see a post with a YouTube looking graphic that says click to play movie, STAY AWAY! That is a nasty Trojan virus and yes I found out the hard way."
#44899 - 02-13-0809:13 PMRe: Viruses and Videos
[Re: Bob K.]
Steve CSteve C
Member
Registered: 01-16-03
Posts: 1650
Loc: Fresno, CA
(75.10.120.146)
Ok, the above movie seems safe enough. But what it describes is pretty scary.
Several weeks ago, I spent hours and hours worth of midnight oil removing spyware / adware viruses from my daughter's laptop. It took several programs like UBCD4Win and Spybot and some analysis tools like HyjakThis to finally clean up the system.
It's a nightmare when those things get installed on the computer.
I am running on a Windows Vista machine, and it seems to be a little more protected. Every time anything runs that needs to install a program it requires authorization.
#44900 - 02-13-0809:24 PMRe: Viruses and Videos
[Re: Bob K.]
ELLSELLS
Member
Registered: 02-13-08
Posts: 11
Loc: Thousand Oaks, CA
(75.82.175.192)
It is true. And Bob, I'm glad to see you found my website. It took slightly more than just clicking on the YouTube looking window to set the virus in motion.
Let me splain: First of all, I was lulled into a false sense of security because it was my own website. Second, the day prior I had been prompted to upgrade my flash player, but did not at that time. When I clicked on the "video" a pop up box told me that I had to upgrade the flash player. The trust content box popped up with a name that looked a whole lot like MicroMedia but in hindsight, it was a bogus company. After that it was all over.
At this point I recovered a little bit of common sense. A program I did not know I had called VirusProtect3.9 swung into action. It found 436 threats and offered to delete them if I would go online and buy their program. It turns out VirusProtect3.9 is the virus I did not fall for that one.
Ultimately, I got rid of the virus with Yahoo Toolbar Anti-Spy, Spybot Search and Destroy, and AdAware. All free.
In other words, I was careless. I saw that you are posting video links and can understand the concern. If a video link looks legitimate, it should not hurt to click on it, Once.
#44903 - 02-14-0810:07 AMRe: Viruses and Videos
[Re: ELLS]
Steve CSteve C
Member
Registered: 01-16-03
Posts: 1650
Loc: Fresno, CA
(129.8.175.52)
It appears the common tool used by viruses these days is to pop up a message saying you need to upgrade something, or else install an add-on in order to view whatever it is you clicked on.
The video Bob posted above does not mention how it gets started -- whether just viewing the video triggers the problem, or whether it invited the viewer to allow the additional install.
#44950 - 02-16-0804:39 PMRe: Viruses and Videos
[Re: Steve C]
Jerry EJerry E
Member
Registered: 02-16-08
Posts: 1
Loc: Spartanburg, SC
(66.169.13.90)
I hesitate to post this, because I am afraid it will lead people to the malicious site.... but at the ClimbMtWhitney.com Forums I found that these bogus links were leading to a nasty site called tivobox[dot]net. Do not even Google that term (without my [dot] replacement), because Google will take you straight there. I blocked this term from any postings, and (so far) we have not had any more problems.
#46281 - 04-07-0808:47 PMRe: Viruses and Videos
[Re: Jerry E]
ClamberAboutClamberAbout
Member
Registered: 06-17-03
Posts: 217
(66.161.59.254)
Or, instead of hours of Spybot, Adaware, updating the anti-virus every week - or every day -, not opening e-mails for fear of <whatever>, etc., etc., etc.,
