Troubling

[cactuswatcher]

Just a few minutes ago, I was presented with a full page splash ad saying that my McAfee anti-virus subscription had recently expired. That seemed like nonsense and without touching that page, I checked otherwise and confirmed that my subscription is very much still active.

I don't no whether it was an honest mistake or a clever malware scheme, but do not click on any web page referring to your anti-virus, without checking with your provider directly.

Comments

[atpo_onm]

Very likely some variety of malware. I had a run-in with this kind of thing five or six years ago -- a window opened up on my desktop warning me that my system had been attacked, and to go to (website) to get the virus removed. Problem was, the window sort of looked like my anti-virus brand's windows-- but not quite.

Without clicking where they wanted me to click, I tried to open another window and-- couldn't. In fact, I couldn't open anything, except (presumably) the one they wanted me too. Extremely suspicious, I forced a shut-down by using the power button (it wouldn't allow a shut-down through the normal method) and took the machine to a PC shop, where, sure enough-- malware. Cost me $180.00 to get it removed and additional protection installed to prevent it from attacking again.

This kind of thing is one of the reasons that besides my normal anti-virus, I only use the Firefox browser, because of their add-on "No_Script" option, which I'm sure has saved me on several occasions from scripts that get hacked onto legitimate websites. (Blocks ads, too, big bonus).

[cactuswatcher]

Ah, those special joys of the Internet. My Internet provider recently changed its email server. The old one allowed you to decide for yourself what was spam and what was not. The new one assumes *any* mass mailing to be spam. So now I have to check to see if there is anything in the spam folder and if it says there is, I have to go into the folder and move everything out, because I haven't had any truly unwanted spam in a decade or more, just mass notifications from companies I deal with all the time!