Social networking is very useful and great fun, but we all need to use the same caution as we do when opening personal email.
I use Digg a lot and I enjoy the links, etc sent to me by my friends and fans, but I recently saw a whole new side to it.
I had ‘dugg’ an article about Eva Peron City: Buenos Aires which collected a lot of reads so I went to Digg to find out if they had come from there. I had a message from someone who was supposedly a fan of mine. I didn’t take much notice of the name of the person because I was interested in their link.
The link was to a video which claimed to show everything there is to see in Buenos Aires, so I clicked on it. A box popped up and told me that I needed a plug in to view the video so I clicked the button and allowed it to install.
At this point AVG virus checker started to flash up virus warnings. I also use the Microsoft virus protection system (the one with the shield)and this started to give warning signals.
Then, I got warning sounds and boxes from a virus protection system that I didn’t recognise. I thought that I may have installed extra protection and perhaps forgotten about it, so when the programme indicated that I had a serious virus infection, I clicked the button to heal it.
At this point all kinds of warning signals were going off on my laptop.
I investigated the virus which had HREU in the name but no other details and discovered that there are fake virus protection programmes being circulated around the internet and some actually introduce trojan horses to your system.
I am not a computer geek by any means but I did know that I shouldn’t close my system down without eradicating these viruses in case they were executable files and they installed on my system when I started it up again. . AVG revealed 28 instances of viruses and Adaware found 40 instances of malware.
My system is checked thoroughly every day and it was clean last night. So, the only conclusion I could come to was that I shouldn’t have opened the video link sent to me via Digg. It had disabled my virus protection and allowed viruses into my system.
Video and other file links sent to you via Digg, StumbleUpon and other social networking sites need to be treated with the same caution you exercise when opening your personal email.
Fortunately, I have been able to clean my system up but it has wasted three hours of my day. Be warned.
I closed my system down thinking that I had cleaned it up. When I restarted it I thought everything was normal but when I tried to get onto the internet I was bombarded with adverts for porn sites, gambling and all kinds of things. My browser had been hijacked and I was being redirected to various website.
I discovered that these sites were all being fed to me by something called ‘adjuggler’. I tried several Adware removal tools including Adaware but nothing worked. Each time I restarted my computer it was back again. I eventually found something called Superantispyware which removed the problem.
I am
June 30th, 2008 at 7:49 am
hmn, thanks for the warning. It’s good to be cuatious though!
June 30th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Thank you for the warning! I will have to be careful.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Yes, I’m glad you’re helping to spread the word about these fake security programs, and I’m glad you let us know how your PC (likely) got infected. I recently spent several hours cleaning a friend’s PC of the same sort of malware, only to have to do it again a few days later. The fake security programs all had the same look and feel, showed tons of infections, and promised to clean the system if you only paid for the upgraded programs. The names were “Privacy Protector”, “Vista AntiSpyware 2008″, and “SpyGuarder.” Some of the steps I took are here: http://1003concepts.com/jp/tech/51 . At least now I can tell him a bit more about how he might have picked these up.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Great advice, another good article thanks for the warning
June 30th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I’m always very careful after my computer was attacked by a virus a few months back, but this just shows how easy it is to fall prey to attacks. Glad you managed to get yours sorted out.
June 30th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
This is a horrible thing. I thought we could trust Digg. But I guess nothing is really safe. thanks for the information.
June 30th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I listed this on digg.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Louie, I recently took a hit to my computer because of my grandson downloading Limewire, and then along comes a fake security system, which he thought we needed because they advised him that we had “threats” against our system. Some of these so called security systems are the “threat”, and for a “mere” $39.99 they will remove the threats. I can totally relate to your frustration. I am still reeling from my encounter.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
thanks for the warning, do appreaciate it!
July 1st, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Thank you for the warning! Was having pc problems too, I am still sorting them out!
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Yeh..sometimes you are trapped through apparently harmless links. THanks for the warning.
July 8th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Thanks for the warning!
July 28th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Ouch! Thanks for the advice!