one question haunts and hurts, too much too much to mention

[enthusiastick]

I knew this was going to happen. My family is cursed, you see. Every desktop computer we own that is connected to the internet (in both our houses) ends up hideously overgrown with viruses. We don't buy new computers due to hardware failure or a desire to upgrade. We buy new computers because the viruses get so bad that its either that or reformat, and my father somehow finds reformatting more tedious. So from the moment I set foot in this house and plugged in my WiFi card I was afraid.

And late last night my fears were justified. I am now the owner of a moderately insidious little worm calling itself W32.Netsky.P@mm!enc. Thus far the little fucker has eaten my Mozilla mail inbox (apparently irretrievably, but I'll work on that once I've nuked him). My first full sweep of the computer turned up 9 copies of the little bastard, and even with System Restore turned off Norton was only able to trap and destroy 7 of those. So now I get to amp things up and really dig into the guts of this computer to get him out. Its possible he's infected my junk mail folder as well - that was the indication I got this morning. Either that or I'm getting new copies of him. I should probably stop downloading my e-mail and get in touch with my webhosting. Guh.

Comments

Dude, it's only technology, it's YOUR bitch, remember?

[timeshaper.livejournal.com]

So, 3 things you need. McAfee, I don't care what anyone says, Norton has failed me bazillions of times, making me tech's bitch. Get the new McAfee, constant monitoring without any interference with your normal stuffs. Secondly/Thirdly, Spybot and Ad-Aware. All 3 of these must be there and have them run nightly on their own, Ad-Aware say at 4:30, Spybot at 5:15, McAfee at 6. This is the AM, if you find yourself interuppted you should be asleep as you're too old for that shit.

With this system in place no matter how many warez sites you visit, how much horrible underwater pornography you pursue or how much spam you get from giving out your e-mail to every tom dick and harry on the web, I lost track of what I was saying... oh well, this'll fix you and keep you fixed if you get this system going and allow it to be maintained. McAfee takes care of 90% of the probs while you sleep and also when dreaming the other 2 progs take away all the pain caused by reckless surfing, downloading, p2p, etc. 2 of these 3 programs are free.

[bobbler.livejournal.com]

One other thing I do that has kept me virus free for a couple years now is that I use the webmail client for checking my mail 99% of the time. Since the webmail won't auto-run scripts, it keeps me pretty safe. You should also avoid using any MS mail clients (like Outlook or Outlook Express).

[rollick.livejournal.com]

I may have gotten the same virus — something spontaneously wiped out my email inbox over the weekend. Or rather, something infected it, and Norton said "Whoops! It's infected! I can't fix it, so I'm hiding it from you! Nyah!" Cass was able to restore it, so you might want to talk to him.