I got this as a PM from a new user here (MannInBlackk) which leads to a mal-ware site (or at least one that has been black-holed by my company's fire wall).

Don't follow the link, here's the DumpShock PM I got:

Hello, friend. There are viruses' activities from your computer in last few days. Strongly recommend you to check your computer. You can find a report about your computer's security and solve every problem with it here: http:// www . check-pc . net / detected / YuriPup
Thank you. Forum member.

Could the mods look at this user too?

I got one too.

As a game related note: Botnets in Unwired are still broken.

I was just about to make a thread about this, as I got one as well.

Hmmm, I got one too. Whatever the link was, it was reported as broken by my computer.

This has been reported in the appropriate section to the admins already.

Where should this be reported, next time?

Here http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showforum=6 i believe

Didn't even occur to me to check there. I figure the news forum was locked and for news only.

I love how random people can tell you that your computer(s) have viruses when they couldn't have possibly scanned it. I have to say that they must have spammed only the people active in the last couple of weeks/months, I read but typically don't log in.

I didn't get one.

On the other half of your post: assuming a computer has viruses on it is actually a pretty decent bet. 89% odds that the user is running windows. Which if we assume isn't a virus itself does have better than even odds that it has some form of virus/adware/malware/spyware installed that the user is not aware of (a firewall/virus scanner is like a condom: not 100% effective, but better than nothing*).

*Possibly debatable, as I run eCondom free** and have never had any real issues, because I'm not stupid and install software I've never heard of. Browse using FireFox, avoid scam-sites, and don't use LimeWire.*** Every year or so I run a scan just to clean off the hundreds of tracking cookies and a half dozen or so minor viruses/malware that do acumulate.

**My desktop actually does have AVG running right now, but my main issue with virus scanners is that I don't want them running while I'm using the machine as they're sucking up valuable system resources (often more so than any unwanted programs are) and when I'm not using the machine it's turned off.

***Funny story: a friend of mine decided to murder a dell desktop that had an 80 GB hard drive. Fresh install of windows, installed LimeWire, told it to search for "porn" and Download All. Shoved it under the bed for a week. Pulled it out and stopped all downloads and ran a virus scan. 800 GB of data later the scan was complete. Same friend also had a Macbook that had gotten infested with a series of viruses (causing all kinds of problems), but when the wireless node in the Commuter's lounge went down he still had a connection to the campus network. Each virus was piggy-backing on another forcing a signal boost to pick up the wireless signal from a block away in another building.

Annoying but highly amusing, I've seen processes fly as two different malwares actively fought eachother. One had infiltrated the networking stack while the other conned itself as a standard error handler dll. Neither could die as they both linked themselves to stuff the other wanted to run, so they ran, killed eachother, then ran eachother again.
I can only imagine what they looked like in VR.

Ever seen a dragon eating its own tail?

Imagine that, but instead of one dragon, you have two. Each trying to consume the other, endlessly.

I got it too, pretty standard spam.

What I found funny was the persons title "PM Spammer". Heh.

had that happen with the kid's comp. They were complaining about slow connection. when I checked it it was connecting through the neighbors open connection a block away. couldn't connect through ours so it went looking...scary thing. We run avast and run cccleaner and malwarebytes weekly. Youngest son is running Ubuntu OS and has a lot less problems..( And the infected hard drive ended up being used for target practice cause we couldn't get all the bugs out.)

Really scary. Its like, "if a virus can do it, why can't the usual software do it?"

Of course, probably because it's over-juicing the card.

Dollars to doughnuts the malware didn't get more then one or 2 hits from dumpshock, considering how much we study the avoidance of pretend in game malware I doubt too many of us would fall for that old trick.

This is spam and that link probably contains malware. DO NOT VISIT IT.

Do not visit links from some numb knuckle you do not know.

- J.

I got it also. It made me disappointed because it means my first PM message on DumpShock was spam. *Sigh*
Way of the world I suppose. At least in SR the AR spam would be bright, flashing and colourful.

I critically failed my roll.

<.<
Wow.
Just wow.

Darn, he didn't PM me. And I was so hoping that I could have a long and interesting conversation about his credit card number and animal porn.

This seems appropriate to the situation

Yeah, but my friend did it first.

How... do you get 800 GB of data on an 80 GB hard drive?

Mad zipping skillz?

OK, so this guy caught one person...eh..My first response reading it was "Wait...
which computer?" and then "And how would he know? I mean, if he is knowing me
from Dumpshock, well...I have no e-mail information or other way to send anything out
to people here...really..how would this guy know? TRAP! Moron!"

I idn't get one, but that name looks familiar, no not from the Will Smith film but as a spam bot, porbalby it's been rolling around for a while adding and extra k or n or something as admins find the creep out. it's a shame that we don't have osme talented hacker who can't go to the sice and launch a cyber attack to crash it on them, maybe we can convince the Chinese the site is a threat.

The site could be a front for Chinese hackers.

We don't honestly know, but that's how much data Norton said it scanned.

Making norton 10x better then any other product on the market. BRILLIANT!

Norton... *shudder*

That's almost as bad as the viruses themselves. Maybe worse.

Bye
Thanee

Note: it might not have been Norton. I'm not even recalling if my friend said anything other than "virus scanner."

in my experience, AVG and avast are not that bad. Norton or kaspersky on the other hand.

the biggest problem with AV software is the extra steps taken each time a binary is launched (and some other files that can contain scripts are read), so at best it should only make a program launch a bit longer. Still, most of them have a paranoid mode where it will scan every darn file read into ram...

as for econdom, that echos my comparison between a pc connected to the net and having unprotected sex

Booted the other day and it went into "scan the 500 GB hard drive" mode and ground FireFox to a near standstill (my 5 year old laptop which behaves like molasses in January was faster).



I first heard "eCondom" from some chat log where the context was semi-ambiguous ("I'm taking off my eCondom" and the rest of the group not quite understanding what that meant) and liked it so much I use it.

ah yes, there are those. Why they insist on having those scheduled, i dont know.

And my choices are:
Ever day [pick a day] at [pick a time]
and
Never

Really? Every day or never?

Edit: "every day" at [time], every week at [day:time], and never.

The fact that the stuff you had on your system didn't just kill norton outright is nifty. I usually avoid the minor stuff, but get nailed with the viruses that literally destroy anti-virus software first, even Nod32. Those are always fun to remove.

Are you implying also that that NIgerian Prince isn't really setting up the money transfer? Next thing you'll tell me these pills won't really give me a larger penis.

Centipedes in my WHAT?


I don't think that's very likely...

80GB to 800GB ?
Macbook ... Virus ???

The macbook was running Windows.

Oh looky. Doublepost!

ARGH ABERATION !!!!

Yeah. He knew that. We asked him about it more than once.

Mind, this was a guy who's real name was only known by his girlfriend* through most of highschool and most of college.

*Gained in college.

Polymorphic code, obviously!