914Driver
914Driver SuperDork
1/16/10 12:24 p.m.

I got a big screen telling me my computer was infected. These pop ups are annoying, it lists all the spyware that's here. Gimme your credit card number andwe can fix it. Internet Security 2010 is the company.

Scam, Phishing?

How do I make it go away?

BoxheadTim
BoxheadTim GRM+ Memberand HalfDork
1/16/10 12:28 p.m.

Run a decent scanner over it, like Spybot Search & Destroy. Preferably boot from a CD first with a Virus scanner on it.

And yes, if it's a browser pop-up, it's a scam.

aircooled
aircooled SuperDork
1/16/10 12:32 p.m.

If it is just a internet window you can just close it. If they keep popping up then you might have a program installed that will keep doing that. A friend of mines daughter pressed the OK button on one of those popups that said "you are infected, scan now?" A bit of a pain to get rid of, but I think AVG for free will get rid of it. Probably want to (if you don't have it already) get AVG for free (search for that) and maybe AdAware and do some scans.

And yes, a pretty irritating scam or sorts. I don't know if there virus scanning is bad, but the fact that they force you into it by effectively infecting your computer is both a bit ironic and BS. Very similar to a gangster protection scam if you think about it.

mad_machine
mad_machine GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
1/16/10 12:40 p.m.

it's a virus onto itself.. look it up online. It if fairly easy to clean out.

wbjones
wbjones HalfDork
1/16/10 1:16 p.m.

damn I love my Mac...

cwh
cwh SuperDork
1/16/10 1:29 p.m.

I'm even getting those through my Skype account. Delete, delete.

donalson
donalson SuperDork
1/16/10 1:33 p.m.

depends on which one and how far along it's gotten...

BoxheadTim is right on... another option is malwarebytes from in safe mode

914Driver
914Driver SuperDork
1/16/10 2:15 p.m.

I downloaded AVG, good until 15 Feb, disc in the mail.

How do I make this nitwit and his desktop (Mine is gone) go away?

Johnboyjjb
Johnboyjjb New Reader
1/16/10 3:31 p.m.

malwarebytes from safe mode is stellar. You can legally download it for free from download.com. AdBlockPlus is an add-on for Firefox that works quite well to help prevent pop-ups too.

autoxrs
autoxrs New Reader
1/16/10 4:58 p.m.
wbjones wrote: damn I love my Mac...

I get heart burn if I have too many (Big) Macs.

  1. Malwarebytes
  2. Adaware
  3. AVG Free

Run those, and call it soup.

Hal
Hal HalfDork
1/16/10 5:12 p.m.

MY wife let one of those in by clicking on it. I tried several different programs but the only one that would get rid of it totally was MalwareBytes.

donalson
donalson SuperDork
1/16/10 5:36 p.m.

avast seems to be pretty good if you let it do the scan when starting up the computer (similar to doing in safe mode)... but malwarebytes is nice

my fav was the one my bro-in-law found... installed 5 or 6 AV... even in safe mode it would disable the av before it could be used... I got tired of it and formated the HDD...

Dr. Hess
Dr. Hess SuperDork
1/16/10 6:30 p.m.

That can be a real nasty one. I worked a day on a PC trying to get rid of that one. I finally gave up. AVG, Malwarebytes, safe mode, etc. did nothing. The Tier 1 IT guy took the disk drive out to analyze, put a new drive in and imaged it. The system got infected when the user went to a game site with IE instead of FF. One time and pow, that was it, system toast.

xci_ed6
xci_ed6 HalfDork
1/16/10 6:48 p.m.

Ubuntu ftw!

Everything is very intuitive. Want a new program? Click Applications, Ubuntu Software Center, type in a description, and download. Don't want a program? Click Applications, Ubuntu Software Center, type in the name, and remove. Open Office is 100% compatible with Microsoft & Mac formats, and is free. Gimp is competitive with Photoshop, and is free. Really, almost everything is free.

You can download a disc image, burn it to a CD, and try it out before installing it. I did have trouble getting it to work on a Sony Vaio laptop, it used some weird GPU and none of the drivers would work. Everything else has been plug and play, from my cell phone, to the built in flash memory reader, to my USB wifi adapter.

Grtechguy
Grtechguy SuperDork
1/16/10 6:53 p.m.

COMBOFIX

from bleeping computer. google it.

Dr. Hess
Dr. Hess SuperDork
1/16/10 7:54 p.m.

Ccombofix wouldn't touch that one on the last system I was working on. Some real shiny happy people involved with that. Why doesn't the government actually do something with our trillion dollars and stop those shiny happy people?

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