Firefox Users Beware!

Now this!

Rusty,

I'm no Geek, but I've had to learn on the go for years how to keep my computers operating without much corporate support. Even in the early days, I knew that the shift in "accents" of the phone-line support staff spelled a need for me to be more literate.

I've found several free utilities that I feel have never let me down a) Avast Home virus protection - free! updates daily - never let a virus through - run it on 6 computers, b) Spybot - free! I run it weekly to clean the spywear that accumulates at an amazing pace, c) Eazycleaner by Toniarts - free! can't seem to make it work with Vista, but does a great job cleaning registry and such with previous OSes.

One big suggestion to those new at on-line searching, don't Google say "Spybot" and expect to get the real article. You will be inundated with fake websites who have paid to come up and deceive you! I always look at the web addresses which are at the bottom of each listing to try to find the legitimate company site.

Finally, Rusty (or whoever can help)- I have an older XP desktop that is just a websurfing device. It has a C and D partioned drive and the D drive is huge and unused. Can I un-partition it? Why do they partition and leave the first drive so small where all the OS and programs reside? Seems stupid! Also, why would my free space decrease by a percent when I defrag, seems counter intuitive to me, is it just an anomaly?

Thanks and see you in DC,
Corey

Oh yeah, finally, finally - I hate Trend Micro!! I would never believe anything they say or especially install anything they make (PC-Cillin for instance). This pretty much goes for the Bozos at Norton and Macafee too!! The very first thing I do with a new computer is delete the so called "free" virus-wear, which if installed, will corrupt your computer for life!!!!!

So Rusty, if someone has downloaded something like this, how do you find it on your pc and how do you get rid of it? non geeks want to know.

There is a free GNU partition manager which I have used multiple times to make my systems more friendly by setting up to handle WinXP Pro, Win7. and Ubuntu.

GNU Parted

I run it from a bootable CD image (iso)

gparted-live-stable

This is somewhat technical and can destroy your entire system if not used properly.

quote:

Originally posted by Shadow man:
...how do you find it on your pc...

With my FireFox Browser open, I went to

Tools > Add-Ons >

I then checked each of my subfolders

Get Add-ons | Extensions | Themes | Plugins

quote:

Finally, Rusty (or whoever can help)- I have an older XP desktop that is just a websurfing device. It has a C and D partioned drive and the D drive is huge and unused. Can I un-partition it? Why do they partition and leave the first drive so small where all the OS and programs reside? Seems stupid! Also, why would my free space decrease by a percent when I defrag, seems counter intuitive to me, is it just an anomaly?

For the past fifteen years, I've partitioned the drives into at least 3 and usually 4 or 5 partitions. The C: drive is usually the smallest, because the only thing I put on there is the OS and folders that have to be on C:.

All apps and data go onto the other partitions. NTFS formatting eliminates many of the issues that FAT32 had, that of a corrupted file allocation table. If that happens with an unpartitioned drive, everything is lost. With a partitioned drive, only the files on that partition have to be reloaded.

Sometimes the only way to get rid of a virus or other malware is to reformat the partition; they rarely affect more than one partition. Until I finally wrote a little program to gut Win 98, the only way to get rid of its eventual sluggishness was to remove it entirely by reformatting the drive. With the drive being only a partition, no personal data was lost.

Most RAID arrays will continue if one drive's partition gets corrupted, but not for all corruptions.

When building PCs, I put things on specific drives as a matter of convenience:

C: OS
D: Drivers and utilities
E: Email, databases, word processors, graphics, etc., apps
F: Images and games
G: Local backup

Having a partitioned drive also speeds up defragging, as only the more fragmented partitions need be defragged, and they're smaller.

quote:

One big suggestion to those new at on-line searching, don't Google say "Spybot" and expect to get the real article. You will be inundated with fake websites who have paid to come up and deceive you! I always look at the web addresses which are at the bottom of each listing to try to find the legitimate company site

In the first post in this thread are links to several useful utility sites.

I'm adding another effective anti-malware app, Malwarebytes.

If you're looking for apps (and reviews), cnet and Major Geeks are reliable repositories.

In Case You Wondered

A couple of days ago, Google featured an "alien" saucer scarfing up one of Google's "O"s. There have been many theories as to what this meant, but it harkens back 20 years to an obscure Oriental space shooter, Zero Wing.

From that unremarkable title came a phrase that we geeks have nearly immortalized, "All your base are belong to us!"

See here

Identity Theft - Check Your Credit Reports!
And Other Things to Keep in Mind

See here.

I'm not sure this belongs here, but either one of my computers or my Yahoo mail account seems to be compromised.

My Yahoo mail account sent out a bunch of letters asking the recipients to click on a link to a Chinese company.

I am not sure what happened. At first, I thought it was a Trojan, but a little Googling of the name of the company revealed that it might be that they used my e mail account to send advertising e mails. The company is Chinese, of bad reputation. I have recently made inquiries and bought from some Chinese vendors of electronic components on eBay. I would suspect that one of them used my Yahoo mail address to somehow get inside and use my address list. I believe I will block eBay from disclosing my e mail address in the future. I am a little chagrined that I did not do that already. Perhaps I was not paranoid enough.

To start with, I updated and ran Norton and Spybot, with nothing found. That sort of confirms my suspicion that they hacked my Yahoo mail account instead of my computer. At least, if Norton and Spybot are good.

So, with no other idea, I will change my Yahoo password. It was already pretty obscure, a great grandmother's maiden name. And, I change it monthly, pretty much.

All suggestions or observations appreciated.

My ISP has a pretty good spam filter, & I get a lot of spam that claims to originate from my own e-mail address. I queried the ISP, & they said there wasn't much they could do about it, but just continue to delete all of that with the rest of the spam. They catch about 15 spams per day, & lately there has been an unusual number of possible virus flags as well. I delete it all if I don't recognize the sender.

Sorry to hear about your spamming issues but if you suspect that you have a virus, trojan or worm go the Microsoft website and download its MALWARE REMOVAL software. It takes up to 24 hours to run the first time but it is VERY thorough and will remove any malicious software residing on your computer. My wife used it when a worm got into her computer. It took about three trys but it eventually got it all.

Good Luck. Carl Feren

quote:

Originally posted by Carl Feren:
if you suspect that you have a virus, trojan or worm go the Microsoft website and download its MALWARE REMOVAL software.

Good Luck. Carl Feren

I went to Microsoft Security Center and confirmed that my Windows is updated daily, which should mean the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool is active. It also confirmed that Windows firewall is on and Windows Virus Protection is on.

And, last night, when I attempted to shut down the computer, it stayed up, telling me it was doing downloads, which is consistent with the automatic downloads the second Tuesday of each month.

Despite all that, on your advice, I did a manual scan with Windows Malicious Removal Tool, just to be safe. Nothing was found. It took 2 1/2 hours.

Yeah, Bill, I received an email from "you" yesterday, suggesting I check out this Chinese electronics company. I clicked on the link and saw a bunch of cameras, cell phones etc. I should have called you first. Do you think some kind of virus might be attached to this link?
Jim

quote:

Originally posted by Jim and Tere:
Yeah, Bill, I received an email from "you" yesterday, suggesting I check out this Chinese electronics company. I clicked on the link and saw a bunch of cameras, cell phones etc. Do you think some kind of virus might be attached to this link?
Jim

First, please accept my apologies. I don't know what I could have done to prevent this from happening, but would certainly appreciate any advice from anyone.

Second, my Yahoo mail is supposed to check for viruses when it sends anything. The key word here is "supposed". No one is "supposed" to use my mail account except me. In addition, you probably have some firewall and virus protection at your end. This did occur when I had the account open, but some folks have reported that their mail accounts sent identical letters when their computers were off, which would seem to indicate an address list hack rather than a trojan. Nothing I have found so far indicates any viruses.

The real question seems to be, is this the result of a trojan in my computer or did they hack my e mail account.

I suspect the latter, but I am far from an expert.

quote:

I should have called you first.

Either that or an e mail. That is always a good rule for an unexpected attachment.

My standard practice for an unexpected attachment from a trusted source is to reply, asking, "Did you send me this, what is it, and why?"

As a general rule, I don't open ANY attachment for at least 24 hours unless it is expected. I never open attachments from an unknown source. And, most of the time, I don't open an attachment for at least 24 hours, as this gives the anti virus programs a chance to get up to speed in case the virus is not yet on their list of definitions. This has saved me at least once. An attachment did not have a virus alert when it came in, but when I got around to opening it, Norton flagged it. It was from a friend of 40 years, who is very computer-savvy and knew nothing of it. I update Norton and Spybot every night, so they are current.

quote:

Originally posted by bill h:
Yeah, Bill, I received an email from "you" yesterday, suggesting I check out this Chinese electronics company.

So I'm going to assume that you didn't send this to me either.



I think your address book was hacked.

[edit] Distorted Bill H's email address 7pm [/edit]