Visit Siani's Other Blogs

Visit Gower Strange Days

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Evil effers!

About 20 minutes ago, I was browsing a website about cats, when I clicked on a link. The link looked innocent enough. It proved anything but. As soon as I reached the website, a little box popped up, telling me my system's performance was seriously compromised, and some software would be downloaded to "optimize" it. At the same time, McAfee SiteAdvisor popped up a red bubble to say the site was a known malware source. I tried to close the first window that popped up, but it just took me to a page where my only option was to confirm the download. There was nothing there that allowed me to refuse the download. I tried to close Internet Explorer. It refused. I right-clicked my wireless network icon to kill my internet connection - that failed to respond, too. So I hit the power button on my laptop, to kill the connection.

After powering up again, I had to sit through a disk check. Once the machine had rebooted - my wireless network icon had vanished from the taskbar. Even though the wireless card showed as enabled, it refused to connect. After much foofing around, and a couple of reboots, I finally got my wireless back. All because some scum-sucking spyware merchants tried to download a pile of crap onto my machine, and I decided to fight back. I now have to run Spybot, just to make sure nothing sneaked itself on to my laptop.

I HATE the low-life rodents who do these things. How bloody dare they? It's as rude as marching into my home and forcing me to have furniture or other things I don't want. Grr! Just be very careful if a window suddenly pops up telling you to download something to "fix" your system. It's a nasty trick to get you to install spyware. And your only option, most of the time, is to kill your Internet connection and close your browser. If that doesn't work - hit the power button as fast as you can. I'd be hitting another button, too, if I had access to an ICBM, the means to fire it at a specific target, and the physical address of the scumbags who tried to force-feed me their scumware.

6 comments:

Dragonstar said...

I fail to see what advantage these people expect to gain. How dare they mess with out computers?
I disagree with you about the ICBM though - too quick. I'd make it so they fried certain parts of their precious anatomies whenever they dared to touch a keyboard!

Liz Hinds said...

Oh that's dreadful! What sort of kick do these people get? Or when they're genuinely trying to sell you something, don't they realise it's going to make you do the opposite?

Gattina said...

It happened to me too ! If you want to close that thing and click on the little cross it really opens. Now what I am doing is I just ignore it, and put it in a corner and after a while when I had opened and closed other websides it suddenly disappeares. It just closed itself. Strange thing !

Siani said...

Usually, the aim is to commit horrid acts such as stealing personal data, tracking your movements across the internet, bombarding you with spam pop-ups or turning your PC into a zombie which sends their spam for them. I'd happily clamp mousetraps on their wotsits, for doing such horrid, irksome things.

Mike said...

If they're clever enough to create these things in the first place then they should be using their skills in a proper manner, like getting a job for a computer firm. Scumbags.

Siani said...

I agree, Mike. Trouble is, they would then have to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. A lot of these things originate with organised crime gangs in Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe, not to mention Central and South America, and the Far East. They're wasting their time trying to raid my bank account, LOL.

 
ss_blog_claim=80361ebb90d0aa68f7212d099b7ed341