Look for lyrics, get a virus!

[Victor]

A warning for anyone who hasn't learned this yet:

Stay away from song lyrics sites!!! They're filthy creatures that are rife with Internet STDs.

My lovely and normally super-intelligent wife made the mistake this weekend of visiting one of those danger zones (she was caught up in the thrill of our new DSL service). It only took one bad click. Just one mistake. .... And our security scan 10 minutes later -- "Uh, honey, I think you should look at this." -- turned up 38 virus threats as almost as many spyware plants.

(To be honest, I ought to point out that I did the same thing at the office in February; I was looking for a particular love song. In that case, the company had to wipe my hard drive clean and reload everything.)

To repeat: Stay away from song lyric sites!!!

[Westley]

There are still respectable pay ones- Like i-tunes and such.

[felicote]

use firefox

[MyrddinsPrecint]

if you use firefox, most of the threats stay away....

also, there are bad song lyrics sites, and good ones. my favorite is songmeanings.net, which isn't always up and functional, but has never installed spyware on my computer.......

[Larrison]

Uh huh.. I looked for one the other night, and two of the sites which were listing lyrics wanted me to enable some high level Active X controls before I could search them.... Excuse me? Why do they need Active X for some lyrics?

[Victor]

Just chatted with a friend. She couldn't figure out how her kids kept finding sites with bugs so quickly. I mentioned song lyrics and it was like a lightbulb turned on over her head.

Firefox, huh? What's a firefox?

My Norton Anti-V program caught and cleaned most of the buggers, but I've still got five threats that I'll have to pick off by hand. I dread that; the process is a pain in the tuchus.

[keith]

http://www.mozilla.org/

decent pop up blocker, most of the web nasties are 'built for IE' so pose less of a problem - although common sense should always apply.

[lochinvar]

Most of the time I use IE, because it's simpler. (Don't have to move the mouse so far to click on the icon. What a lazy SOB...)

However, when I know I'll be venturing into risky territory, I use Firefox.

[electricepeeist]

My dad just did a spyware scan on my comp and apparently in the last 2 months I've gotten 29 of them. And we have a popup blocker. But I had a project that involved looking up a lot of lyrics... sing365 seems to be fairly non-fatal.

[jeff]

Use firefox or mozilla. Friends don't let friends use IE ("it's not a browser, it's a petri dish for viruses"). Or use a Mac. Or use a Linux or Unix based system.

[Elemental]

I'm pretty sure that IE comes with spyware installed.

My IE was taken over by net hijacker so whenever I oppened it up I would automaticly get rerouted to a searchwebsite. Everytime I tried to type something new into the address bar it would change to easysearch.com.

I couldn't get rid of it on my own and the results of my research indicated that it was a long and complex process to get rid of it. So I said "bollocks to this" and got firefox. I haven't looked back.

[lochinvar]

My dad just did a spyware scan on my comp and apparently in the last 2 months I've gotten 29 of them. And we have a popup blocker. But I had a project that involved looking up a lot of lyrics... sing365 seems to be fairly non-fatal.

Contrary to popular myth, popup blockers don't stop spyware--they just block popups. Nor will anti-virus software catch them all, since they aren't really "viruses", but only passive spies.

Get a good spyware scanner, like XoftSpy or SpyHunter. And run it at least once a week. Along with Norton or Macafee, to get the viruses.

[keith]

Get a good spyware scanner, like XoftSpy or SpyHunter. And run it at least once a week. Along with Norton or Macafee, to get the viruses.

... but alot of these things get onto your computer via gaps in IE security - I've been amazed how much less of this junk I have picked up since switching to firefox, even though I never click the "okay I would like some random piece of internet malware to reset my computer's clock" button.

[lochinvar]

(snip) My IE was taken over by net hijacker so whenever I oppened it up I would automaticly get rerouted to a searchwebsite. Everytime I tried to type something new into the address bar it would change to easysearch.com.

I couldn't get rid of it on my own and the results of my research indicated that it was a long and complex process to get rid of it. So I said "bollocks to this" and got firefox. I haven't looked back.

Two software packages, both free: HijackThis and CWShredder. (The last is for "CoolWebSearch", one of the most pernicious and tenacious of the spyware/hijacker programs.)

I had a hijack, also. McAfee couldn't touch it, nor Norton. HijackThis and CWShredder took care of it, and it hasn't recurred.

There is a special circle of Hell reserved for browser hijackers...

[electricepeeist]

Used to have McAffee, which was too lazy to actually start up, let alone do anything, now have Avast. I think it works pretty well. The main problems are having dsl and IE.

[Victor]

I pray that some day I'll be on the jury that gets to decide a computer virus hacker trial.

[MyrddinsPrecint]

again, Spybot and Ad-Aware should be mentioned, and although i feel that there's a choir singing about the holy trio of firefox, spybot, and ad-aware, i suppose the song can't be sung enough............

[felicote]

I used to use adaware and spybot but microsoft anti spyware is so much better.

[lochinvar]

Ah, but who'll catch Microsoft's spyware? Better to have a third party, or two or three...

[telkanuru]

I pray that some day I'll be on the jury that gets to decide a computer virus hacker trial.

People need to learn the difference between the typical "hacker" and "script kiddies".

Hacker- interested in information, testing systems and trying to crack them. The really good ones you never catch, so they obviously can't do stuff that particularly malicious to your computer.

Script kiddie- your average 13 (mental age, not physical) year old that just found out about sex, swearing, and the internet. Finds various pre-generated 'hacking' programs (ie. scripts) and uses them for evil and to feel like he's a big boy now. Also may be trolls, spawn campers, PK-ers. AKA: wastes of sperm.