Spybot V Spyware

[martymas]

i have to post this one

this is an extract from a board close to home

a person was instructed to install spybot

a so read and see the result

ive tried to nurture many of the posters on thie particular board

on compt maintainence

but it seems im failing

as you will read

marty

---------------------------------this is the post---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fixed a friend's computer that was running slow.

Carried out the usuals disk clean up, defrag, spybot, ad-aware, registry clean.

Was running very well, friend with telstra so I could not download spybot.

Instructed to download spybot, she downloaded spyware.

Now her computer is infected with a virus windows is showing, surmising that the spyware company have installed these viruses so the US$29 has to be payed for the spyware program to remove the blighter's.

Anyway round this con ? Friend had some cowboy around in weekend, charged $120 for two hours but not totally fixed the problem, he put the question to my friend of do you do internet banking ROFL, be many of us with viruses if it were common place.

[JDoors]

Neither Spybot nor Adaware will give you a virus.

But.

It's possible to get either similar programs that could (similar names) or hacked original ones (from the wrong download sites).

So without knowing WHERE the person got the program from and what they have EXACTLY (the actual website address and filename), it's difficult to say what happened.

[martymas]

yes JD i agree

i remember i caught a virus

at techtv

trying to access major geeks

from the search bar

wnen i opened it avast detected it

and isolated it

i posted the problem on the message board

and dammed if a rep from majorgeeks

replied and lambasted shit out of me

for posting false info

as it happened i had documentation

so i posted it to the board

however

the guy pmed me several days later

appologising and said the search site i accessed

was a spoofed site.

and they had taken measure to rectify the probelm

later i thought about it and i should have contacted major geeks

instead of posting on a public forum

as i had used their site for a long time

i was a bit angry

but i was green as grass those days

and i learned my lesson

marty

Edited June 4, 2007 by martymas

[blim]

I've read about cooties having similar names to the "good guys" and folks getting in trouble with downloading the wrong thing.

And Marty, now I'm still a computer greenie, but you did the right thing "going public" about that spoofed site. Your posting about it for everyone to read prevented someone else from dealing with a virus! I would have done the same thing just to warn others.

Liz