Sunday, May 08, 2005

Yes it could happen to you too - malware comes visiting

Saturday morning started on a lazy note with promise of a deliciously indolent day ahead. Late morning found me at the home computer browsing for coffee recipes. I was thirsting for a mocha and was feeling too lazy to venture outdoors. So the thought of being able to brew delectable coffees in house occured to me. Which brings me to the subject at hand --- the hazards of browsing.
I had little expectation of being struck by virus or other malware as my browsing habits are very, very kosher. However, I was left rubbing my eyes in disbelief as my screed went BSOD blue with a message about Trojan smitfraud.c. A bunch of icons appeared on screen that would be indiscreet to describe. It took awhile to realize that malware has struck.Thankfully, I had another machine that I used to Google on this and found that I had realy been done in. I was planning on buying a commercial anti virus package when I decided to check up on free stuff. Actually, there's a lot.
I also came to know that there was a site called GeeksToGo that offers gratis help to people on their PC travails. Well I finally found my way to Eston Bond's site that gave me all the necessary steps to rid myself of the dubious smitfraud. In the process I found about a set of tools that are now the proud protectors of my PC --- AVG Antivirus, ZoneAlarm personal firewall, Ad Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy form a formidable guard.
All's well that ends well and now the home PC is back at the service of my family. Only, my search for mocha recipes got delayed by a day.



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