Sunday, May 9, 2010

Malware Infection – Witnessed In Real-Time

I follow another repair technician’s blog. The lady owns and runs a computer repair business in the Minneapolis/St.Paul area. In this blog entry she describes in striking detail what she observed when her computer got “infected”. All she “did” was doing normal things in Hotmail. She did not mention though what web browser she was using; I have asked her but naturally not gotten an answer yet (it’s Sunday morning, even in Wisconsin). Update May 10th: Lisa has replied right away, thanks for that. And guess what, she was using Internet Explorer version 8!

To all of my customers reading this: You know better, don’t you?

The infection that her computer got seems to have been a version of currently fairly common “rogue” programs. Only a few of these are caught by commonly available anti virus programs. The behavior of the “rogues” appears not to trigger most virus protection programs, go figure.

It may be besides the point here but for years I recommend NOT to use Hotmail and/or Yahoo accounts, especially not from within Internet Explorer! Update May 10th: It may not prove anything but I sure feel reassured in my constant preaching to shun IE.

On March 4th 2010 I wrote this article titled “Sudden Virus Alert?”. Right after posting this here I will augment the post from March 4th with a bit more detail about the browser issue.

Browse safely and stay warm (we had a frosty night).

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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