Kill it, before it develops language skills!

[drcpunk]

Annoying things that do stuff to computers are evolving in front of my eyes. I don't know if it's a virus or adware or what that got my work computer. I was at a website. A specific one I chose to go to. After that, my home page is hijacked to something else.

This happened once or twice some months ago, and I reset. But this time, I couldn't do that because the thing kept asking to download something and not letting me do other stuff in IE until I said yes. And I kept saying no. And then it asked something different, with only one button, an "OK" button, about how it won't ask me again. Phrased very confusingly, so I'm not quite sure what it said.

And after lunch, there was a new tool bar on the screen. So, I called over the researched I'd hired because, among other things, he has good computer skills. And he got rid of what he could and downloaded Adware and Spybot Search and Destroy for me. But he says this does happen a lot.

Oh, and some of the cleverer ones can shut off Spybot Seach and Destroy. And some turn off modem sounds and dial long distance 1-900 numbers. And some put 1 pixel by 1 pixel invisible windows on the sceen and record every keystroke.

And the anti-virus software can't keep up any more. And, while some of the folks who do this crap are arrested, it keeps going on. Evolution in action.

How educational.

Comments

[avram]

Firefox is Mozilla. Specifically, it’s the browser-only version of Mozilla, without the mail and Usenet junk built in. I’m using it on the Windows machine I’m on at work, and I like it lots. It’s still a pre-1.0 release, but it hasn’t crashed on me yet.

Coolest thing about Firefox, the thing that may yet get me to use it over Safari on my Mac: Extensions. Coolest extension: NukeAnything.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Ah. Right, I don't use that at home because I use Mozilla and Mozzila's mail reader. But that's not an issue at work, so long as no one minds if I use something other than IE. My last job, I could have both Netscape and IE 'cuz I was the webmaster and needed to see how our site looked in both, but everyone else had to use IE.

[stormsweeper.livejournal.com]

Firefox is a little more "bleeding edge" than Mozilla. There's a recurring bug with the text editor widget (which includes form fields) but which can be temporarily fixed. The prior version of Firefox (which was called Fire[i]bird[/i]) didn't have the issue, and that's what the latest Mozilla suite is based on.

IE can also be set to be pretty aggressive about security, but that only works if you are the only person using the computer.

I use IE at work to verify the functionality for our site, but for all other purposes use Firefox.