Spyware On My Work PC?

You think?

Kmorg & Ult must belong to that infamous christian spyware ring.

That's a little odd.

Lol!

spectrefate wrote:

That's a little odd.

Not really. I have the Virtu.Monde virus. Look it up. It's a nasty one. The fix is basically: Reformat. If this were my own PC I could get rid of every file, but this network here at work is so unsecure it would take a hacker 20 seconds to bring the whole thing down. Plus I have no rights. The people that work in the networking office suck. I don't even have enough rights on my PC to run Defrag or End Task on Windows Media Player. Haha! I get ACCESS DENIED pop-ups. The people that work in the networking office just don't have the skills to run a good network. If this company brought in a consultant, his solution would be: Fire them all! Seriously.

The funny thing is, when I was here on Wednesday, none of this crap was on my PC. When I came in Sunday, I logged on to a bunch of Virus Found! pop-ups from Norton. My PC was locked, no one has my password. So how in the three days I was off did viruses get onto my PC? Because the network has no security.

Yuck. I guess NSFW stuff is the least of your worries.

spectrefate wrote:

Yuck. I guess NSFW stuff is the least of your worries.

That's probably what happened. Your porn messed my PC up!

Off topic, sorry, but does anyone know what a "Troyan Horse" is..? My "Avast! Antivirus" system keeps detecting it, but whenever i click "move to chest", it fails. And the software cannot delete it either, which is very weird...

I was informed that starting Feb. 1st at my work we'll be monitored. I don't mind since I don't need to go to questionable sites anyhow....

Mglaffas81 wrote:

Off topic, sorry, but does anyone know what a "Troyan Horse" is..? My "Avast! Antivirus" system keeps detecting it, but whenever i click "move to chest", it fails. And the software cannot delete it either, which is very weird...

It's not weird. A trojan horse is essentially a virus. You generally get them by clicking something online that isn't what it appears (hence the name). Ever get a pop-up that asks if you want something, then shows a YES or NO button? Guess what? That's a picture. The entire thing is a button. You click it, you get yourself a nice little program running in the background. Those things are everywhere online. You ever go to some place like MySpace and go to click a link and all of a sudden a picture appears, making the link you meant to click shift down? What happens? You clicked the picture. Spyware! You think those things load that slow just because? It's meant to load at the precise moment most people will be clicking certain links, thus you'll click the wrong thing. If you don't learn about this sort of thing, you're not going to like the computer-based future we're heading into.

New viruses are created every day. You need to have a combination of anti-virus/spyware/adware programs, but you also need to be intelligent about what you do online. Those that don't learn will regret it. As technology brings everything closer to being run through PCs, it should on everyone's priority list to learn about this stuff. You may just get random pop-ups and redirects, but you could also lose all your financial information.

No one using a computer should ask "what's a trojan horse?" Not being mean or anything either, it's just the truth. On my PC I have the full version of McAfee and AVG, Ad-Aware (free), Spybot (free), and HijackThis! (free, but I recommend not removing anything unless you know what you're doing). One is simply not enough.

And even then, it's not always enough. Regular back-ups are smart things to do. Go to start > Run > and type msconfig and hit ENTER. If you have XP you should see something that says LAUNCH SYSTEM RESTORE. Click it. You'll see two options. 1. Restore my computer to an earlier time, and 2. Create a restore point. Check Create a restore point, then NEXT. Type in a description (doesn't have to be anything special, unless you plan to do something specific afterward, like mess with your registry). Then click CREATE. I try to do this every day. If something changes on my PC, I go into msconfig and click on Restore my computer to an earlier time. I can select what I want and restore my PC to that days state. The only problem is that you lose everything that you did after that date.

This is always a good thing to do. Some versions of Windows doesn't come with msconfig, but you can download it.

Eyesore wrote:

Mglaffas81 wrote:

Off topic, sorry, but does anyone know what a "Troyan Horse" is..? My "Avast! Antivirus" system keeps detecting it, but whenever i click "move to chest", it fails. And the software cannot delete it either, which is very weird...

It's not weird. A trojan horse is essentially a virus. You generally get them by clicking something online that isn't what it appears (hence the name). Ever get a pop-up that asks if you want something, then shows a YES or NO button? Guess what? That's a picture. The entire thing is a button. You click it, you get yourself a nice little program running in the background. Those things are everywhere online. You ever go to some place like MySpace and go to click a link and all of a sudden a picture appears, making the link you meant to click shift down? What happens? You clicked the picture. Spyware! You think those things load that slow just because? It's meant to load at the precise moment most people will be clicking certain links, thus you'll click the wrong thing. If you don't learn about this sort of thing, you're not going to like the computer-based future we're heading into.

New viruses are created every day. You need to have a combination of anti-virus/spyware/adware programs, but you also need to be intelligent about what you do online. Those that don't learn will regret it. As technology brings everything closer to being run through PCs, it should on everyone's priority list to learn about this stuff. You may just get random pop-ups and redirects, but you could also lose all your financial information.

No one using a computer should ask "what's a trojan horse?" Not being mean or anything either, it's just the truth. On my PC I have the full version of McAfee and AVG, Ad-Aware (free), Spybot (free), and HijackThis! (free, but I recommend not removing anything unless you know what you're doing). One is simply not enough.

And even then, it's not always enough. Regular back-ups are smart things to do. Go to start > Run > and type msconfig and hit ENTER. If you have XP you should see something that says LAUNCH SYSTEM RESTORE. Click it. You'll see two options. 1. Restore my computer to an earlier time, and 2. Create a restore point. Check Create a restore point, then NEXT. Type in a description (doesn't have to be anything special, unless you plan to do something specific afterward, like mess with your registry). Then click CREATE. I try to do this every day. If something changes on my PC, I go into msconfig and click on Restore my computer to an earlier time. I can select what I want and restore my PC to that days state. The only problem is that you lose everything that you did after that date.

This is always a good thing to do. Some versions of Windows doesn't come with msconfig, but you can download it.

Oh, all right.

- Yes, I know that the entire thing is a button. I never click them, and cannot recall clicking them. I never visit questionable sites, I don't use any form of chat-site (except for this, if you view it as such) like MSN, or other...I would say that I am fairly knowledgable when it comes to computers, but I had no idea what a Trojan Horse was.

- Thanks for the help, I'l try and do that. ...should I back up my files, and re-install my computer, or how would you suggest I get rid of it for now... ?

I have:

Spyware Blaster

Spybot

Antivir

Ad-Aware

Is that enough? I always wonder....

Mglaffas81 wrote:

- Thanks for the help, I'l try and do that. ...should I back up my files, and re-install my computer, or how would you suggest I get rid of it for now... ?

No. Just download the programs we've suggested and give them a run. Most viruses can be removed by these programs, but some like the VirtuMonde virus—which is what I had on my work PC—require some serious manual work within the registry and elsewhere on the PC. Unless you know what you're doing, never touch registry settings. One small change can make your PC never load your operating system again. Haha. A reformat is then required. But most viruses can be removed with no problems.

So try the programs we've mentioned (except HijackThis!). In fact, there are forums out there were computer nerds will help you decipher the log that HijackThis! creates. They'll tell you what to delete. But be nice to them. Computer nerds are evil on the inside.

scottmitchell74 wrote:

I have:

Spyware Blaster

Spybot

Antivir

Ad-Aware

Is that enough? I always wonder....

Should be. Is Antivir the virus protection? The others catch adware/spyware. As long as you have a mix that catches that and viruses, you should be good. Of course, you can't run them once every 162 days and expect them to work. Haha.

All my friends ask me for help all the time. So I help them. Then months later they'll be mad that their PCs are running like crap again. I'll go over, and their virus definitions will be like 200 days out of date. I tell them to update this crap, but they don't. I had one friend that had issues with his PC, so I cleaned everything up, explained what all the programs did and whatnot. So what did he do? He went to a million porn sites, thinking he now had protection. Yeah...um...no. Reformat! Haha. Another friend had me fix his PC and then when it started having issues again, and eventually wouldn't do anything, his wife blamed me! Haha. She said it might not have worked great, but after I touched it it worked worse. Of course, they never ran the software I told them to run.

You just gotta run this stuff all the time.

Quote :

Computer nerds are evil on the inside.

Sounds like some self-loathing going on here!

scottmitchell74 wrote:

Quote :

Computer nerds are evil on the inside.

Sounds like some self-loathing going on here!

Me? No way. I hate this IT crap. Haha. Have you ever tried to have conversation with a real computer geek? They're probably the most elitist turdsticks I've ever had the misfortune of being associated with.

No I haven't.....but I can see how they might look down their noses at us benighted...

Eyesore wrote:

Mglaffas81 wrote:

- Thanks for the help, I'l try and do that. ...should I back up my files, and re-install my computer, or how would you suggest I get rid of it for now... ?

No. Just download the programs we've suggested and give them a run. Most viruses can be removed by these programs, but some like the VirtuMonde virus—which is what I had on my work PC—require some serious manual work within the registry and elsewhere on the PC. Unless you know what you're doing, never touch registry settings. One small change can make your PC never load your operating system again. Haha. A reformat is then required. But most viruses can be removed with no problems.

So try the programs we've mentioned (except HijackThis!). In fact, there are forums out there were computer nerds will help you decipher the log that HijackThis! creates. They'll tell you what to delete. But be nice to them. Computer nerds are evil on the inside.

Thanks man, I appreciate it