Malware/Privacy Intrusion Virus in P.M.'s?!?!

Perhaps it is only me, but the other night I'm thinnking it was Saturday night, I was checking everything out and received a pm... So I checked it out, and soon after, before I could reply, I started getting this Win 7 Security pop up that I have seen a few times before, on my older laptops, which the virus eventually ruined.

Here is a screen shot of what it looks like


It has many different looks, but this is the most common look. It is a fake antispyware to get you to buy the program. Trust me I did my research. When infected your computer will not let you go to websites, or almost anything else. But the strange thing is that it comes and goes, It tapered off Early Sunday morning, and I immediatly purchased Malwarebytes, the suggested answer in most forums. Now everytime I go to my P.M.'s there is a pop up of it being blocked. So I'm glad I purchased the program. Just a heads up to anyone else this may be happening to.

I got a virus this weekend also while on this site. It actually disabled my anti-virus and anti-malware. It also killed the ability to restore to a date before the virus. I ended up wiping the hard drive and reinstalling the factory disks. It's a rootkit virus, which my computer expert son says is usually attached to ads (not by the advertiser or site). He advises backing up your computer every few days, and not clicking on any newer ads. I'm not talking about classifieds, but banner ads.

Noelle

BTW, Norton Anti-virus will catch these, but the free programs will not (ex. Avira)


Noelle

Thanks Noelle, I almost went with Norton, but everyone seems to suggest this Malware Program, and it seems to work quite well.

I've heard a couple of people say something along these lines, but no one has pointed out an actual source of the virus. My programmer has checked out the code of the site as well as the server and has not seen any indication of an intrusion by a hacker. I am running both MalWareBytes and Vipre and have not had a single red flag raised by either of those programs. And certainly I am on this site more than most people. The only hit I got at all recently was when some cretin tried to register an infected site onto my FaunaTopSites site, which I terminated.

Now, if someone is injecting infected ads via Google, then that is another story entirely, and certainly nothing I have much control over. If a particular ad is identified as being the culprit, I can block THAT ad. Same goes with my FaunaAds ads that run on the site. I know I don't review all ads that come to this site, and quite likely Google does not neither. Certainly someone could pay to put a malware page link in there, but unless and until someone notifies me of which ad is the culprit, it would be nearly impossible to determine. All someone would have to do is to change their website periodically so that the malware only showed up at random times, and it would be such an intermittent problem that it would be pretty darn difficult to determine. In any case, I don't believe anyone can get infected by a virus with just an ad link showing up on the site. They would have to click the ad in order to go to the site itself for the code to be run to initiate the infection. At least that is my understanding of the method of infection.

So if you click on an ad and get a warning of an attempted virus injection, you need to contact me to let me know which ad it was that you clicked on.

The root virus is usually attached to ads because they have more 'open doors' than any other documents. They are not at all the fault of the advertiser. They can attach to a Walmart ad, or whatever. My anti-malware and Avira did not detect it either. But about the 3rd time I ran scans, both programs were disabled.
The higher end antivirus programs that are updated daily learn very quickly and work well. I've put Norton on now, so if I get a warning I'll let you know.

I'm not thinking you can do anything about it. I was just giving a heads up. Obviously, I have no intention of avoiding the site!

Noelle

Hi,
I also got this virus when viewing a fauna thread. My hubby fixed it (I'm not sure how) but just wanted everyone to know I was also affected.
Thanks,
Nikki

Rich, the thing is I didn't click on any ad what so ever. Just my P.M., and I have gotten it randomly even just when switching over sites from say facebook, to NBA.com. I think it's just the lurking around in the net, it just seems I get it more frequent here lately.

get ad ware free...it should help...but get it when safe mode with network.

I think it is pretty much a given that if you want to cruise the internet, you HAVE to have as much protection as possible from these cretins that create malicious programs and set them loose on other people. I used to think that it was only pretty seriously disturbed people doing this sort of thing for giggles, but now I'm not so sure. Probably more likely it's just another aspect of the cyberwar taking place that we just barely see from the sidelines.