thanks for the heads up champ, much appreciated
Sorry ssrattus...you beat me..
Hi all,
Please be careful on MSN.
A few of us got hit tonight with some unwanted registry changes.
A pop up came up saying a friend wanted to talk to me on msn, and they wanted me to run a file showing a picture of me.It had my hotmail address in the message/link, so I am assuming it got in via msn or hotmail?? Assuming I know my friend is trusted, I ran the file. It was a bad decision. Spybot went wild warning of registry change, and to overide it...couldn't stop it.
I had to run spybot to fix it all...which it did.
Other persons online got hit the same.
Hope this helps someone
Last edited by viewer; 12-04-08 at 12:57 AM. Reason: sorry to ssrattus
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thanks for the heads up champ, much appreciated
This is old news it's been happening for years , always happens the same way and people always just click yes I accept the picture and wham!! it will do more than registry changes as you learn in clean up process , It will also install programs that run in the background that spybot will just ignore.
Do a google search for MSN Picture Virus because the virus itself installs spyware and opens up ports , spybot will get the spyware but not the virus.
Equally as frustrating and the virus itself is the warnings that people post when they think they discovered something new like this.
Before you post virus / spyware warnings do a google search and you will soon realise how "not" new most of these issues are , if it's not a hoax ( like 99% of virus warnings ) it will most likely already be done to death.
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,190,000 for MSN Picture Virus. would indicate you haven't discovered the wheel usually
viewer thanks for the reminder
it's easy to get careless when your on MSN
When you do things right, people won't be sure that you have done anything at all
Lighten up dude, he's trying to give people a heads up. HOW DARE HE BE COMMUNITY MINDED ! We can't all be as switched on as you....
It is totally reasonable to post a warning like this a forum, people that use the same forum often have people they know on MSN, and thus may have the same thing happen at the same time.....
Dunno how good this application is ... or that it is legit. A google of the url doesn't bring up any red flags.
Hi nonoize,
I haven't tried that.
AVG and Spybot did most of the job though, as well as ssrattus's link.
Perhaps had I not had been stupid enough to run the file in the first instance, I would have had no worries, but I didn't.
I like the feel of avg, and it seems to work away well without interrupting things, like some other freebie one's have before for me.
Mind you, I have googled your suggestion, and bookmarked it for future reference.
Thanks for that
You get what you pay for when it comes to antivirus software. You can get a legit activation key to Kasperky AntiVirus or Kaspersky Internet Security ( which more than likely would have told you not to click it ) off Ebay for $10AUD.
Spend the money , its well worth it. I had the wonderfull idea of putting AVG Free on my daughters laptop once to save some money and had to format it due to the amount of viruses , spyware and other crawlies on it.
Comodo Antivirus is a beta version and is a nightmare ( unless they ever got around to finding a stable version ). Their Firewall is good though.
A general comment for bulletproof security when browsing the net ...
I use a little hardware device which with an appropriate low-level disk driver creates a non persistent image of my disk partition ...
Without getting too technical ... you can install everything on your main drive and at a suitable point freeze this partition - so any further changes ... data written to it ... will not persist unless you want it to ...
If you get hit by a registry change or installed a rouge program which has compromised your system ... you simply reboot and it will restore the system to its last persistent stage ...
I have been using this type of system protection for years - on servers (with working images) and on home PC ... it always has given me bullet proof protection ...
There are several version of this type of system security both H/W and software. The software version is called DeepFreeze made by a great company called Faronics. H/W versions are numerous and have varied features - but all work on same principle ...
If you use this type of device you will ALWAYS be able to recover from any threat that has crossed your normal protection systems ...
Hope this information is useful
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