It’s been my firm view that malware doesn’t infect folks’ computers. Folks infect their computers with malware as a result of laziness or carelessness.
Well, I still hold that view. Properly patched computers with up-to-date anti-malware from a well-respected anti-malware software vendor, operated by users who practice safe surfing and generally safe computing practices are… safe.
But folks get careless or lazy and don’t keep their OSes and applications up-to-date, don’t run regular full scans with their anti-malware, do visit “risky” sites (and don’t have or don’t pay attention to link scanning software), etc.
Recently two very (very) smart people I know did infect themselves with some malware by CLICKing on a popup “warning” that looked very much like a Microsoft Security Essentials window. One told me he thought as he clicked on it, “Oh, no! I shouldn’t have done that!” but by then it was too late. Took about an hour and a half to fully clean his system (only about 15 minutes on my part, since I could trust him to do the rest of the procedure himself, after having it lined out for him). The other person? Knew she’d infected herself and what she’d done to do so but had no clue how to extricate herself from the problem.
OK, I’m going to give some general Windows guidelines for avoiding infection from the kinds of fake anti-malware infectors these folks(and many less smart folks who had NO idea where or how they’d “been infected”) infected themselves with, and a couple of hints on manual fixes if you’ve gone ahead and infected yourself anyway:
1. No! Do NOT click on that warning! Not anywhere! No, don’t do it! Continue reading “Cutting Users a Slight Bit of Slack”