Yesterday, on an otherwise lazy Sunday, I was noodling around on my laptop at home. I went to open up an article on the Strib homepage, and all of a sudden I had a request from an anti-virus service to update my settings and run a check. This anti-virus program told me that I was at risk of downloading a new and dangerous "Trojan" virus, and that I should upload the most recent version right away. It even provided the easy button to push to begin the download. Convenient, right?
Wrong!! After it began doing a few "fixes" to my computer, I realized that although the symbol for this anti-virus "service" and the colors/fonts for it were similar, I was actually beginning to download the virus itself! I called my resident tech guy (my system administrator-in-training husband) who came to the rescue, and prevented my computer from doing anything else harmful.
I was so surprised at how bamboozled I was! I never fall for this type of thing, and here was the perfect virus disguised as something to help me.
I guess I better be wary if anyone approaches me with the too perfect looking apple in the next few days, too. I would hate to end up like Snow White!
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2 comments:
We received an e-mail earlier this year, disguised as a greeting card from someone. When I tried to open it, I downloaded the virus you were talking about. It was disguised as an antivirus and completely crashed my computer. I now have a new computer and am much more careful. Scary stuff out there!!
Wow, I'm glad you were able to stop it. Those things are so tricky -- I remember getting an email from my bank saying to update info, etc. It looked EXACTLY like USBank's stuff, but I hesitated. A couple days later I got a note in the mail saying that USBank never sends emails. It is crazy how 'good' these bad people are at doing bad things.
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