Thursday, August 6, 2009
Bloggers Beware!!
Well my fellow bloggers--here's a little warning that is of particular interest if you use Blogger as your platform. This morning, when I went to access my blog, I was denied access (the page wouldn't even load) and given a big Google warning that it appeared I might have been infected with malicious spyware. All very nicely worded so that they could never claim I WAS infected, but gee whiz....we can't let you in until you either a) wait awhile or b) run some anti spyware/adware software. Convenient links were provided to two such programs --both of which APPEARED to be free.
Let me add here that I have a relatively new computer, and haven't installed a lot of extra spy/malware catching programs trying to keep things simple. Now I have good antispy software and malware protection as part of my McAffee protection suite, and when I ran those scans..all appeared well. But I still couldn't get my blog to load. Much gnashing of teeth at this point.
SO...........instead of just downloading my two favorite programs that I knew worked and could be trusted...................like a big dummy................I downloaded one of Google's linked programs for free and ran that program which told me I had 2 SEVERE files that were going to cause me problems.
Now comes the clincher......according to this Google linked program "AdwareProfessional" I now had to 'register' the program to be able to clean up these two files. Of course when I clicked on register (Ok, ok, I know....stupid....blame it on not enough coffee and too much sunshine) I discovered --surprise, surprise-- that it would only cost me $37.95 or some close dumb amount to 'register.'
I then Googled this program(Adware) and found a good amount of discussion at one of my trusted sites CNET (should have done this in the first place). I also googled "Spydriver", one of the files this bogus Adware program labeled as a severe problem on my computer, and found that it is planted into your computer (perhaps by Adware itself?) to get you to buy software to clean it up. Big fat frowny face here.....
Fortunately, another of my favorites (again....why did I trust Google, instead of the old standbys?) Spybot S&D identified and safely quarantined this little darling for me. Uninstalling it looks like it may be a real hassle, but at least it's off in jail for now.
Please don't confuse this Adware program with Ad-aware - a free program I have used successfully for years. That one is a good one, and I have reinstalled it on my computer. The moral of the story, please beware of links in anything --use the old "trust but verify" before you download anything. Here's another link to discussion about Adware.
SHAME on Google for posting these links. I'll be much less ready to trust anything from Google from now on.
11 comments:
Welcome, thanks for stopping by. Now that you've heard our two cents, perhaps you have a few pennies to throw into the discussion. Due to a bunch more anonymous spam getting through, I've had to disallow anonymous comments. I try to respond to all comments posing a question, but may not always get to you right away.
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I had McCaffe when I got my first computer 7 years ago when I went to school and got more viruses with the free trial I had for 3 months, then I have in the past 7 years. Sometimes, I found, they're slow with the updates for virus protection. It doesn't help with the problems you had when downloading the files that google recommended, but maybe look into seeing that McCaffe is actually updating to catch this stuff before it happens.
ReplyDeleteHopefully you'll have no more issues.
AVG Free is another great free virus program. They have been able to get rid of all my problems with the exception of one rather fatal worm.
ReplyDeleteJasmyn...I have used AVG with great success, and had already decided that when my current McAfee expires, I'm switching back to it.. I had it on my old computer, and didn't add to here because McAfee came with the machine. I've been perfectly happy with McAfee, but AVG is free and works like a charm.
ReplyDeleteGoogle may not be to blame for these problems. The perpetrators of malware are incredibly adept at making their popup windows look realistic -- fooling the PC user by making it appear they are being warned by a service provider such as Google. The underlying issue is that your computer had some vulnerability that the malware was able to exploit ...
ReplyDeleteWe've been having weird stuff happening with my (work) health reform blog, too. On Tuesday, I scheduled my post for Wed, even though the form didn't look right. When I got home, I looked at the blog and only the headline was there, not the text.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like there's something different every day.
I'm ready to say that it was my computer, but still feel Google has some responsibility since it was only my Google blogger page that was impacted. I use Google news as my home page and was able to access it, and every other webpage, no sweat. I tried on IE7, Firefox, and Chrome browsers...got the same result for everything...
ReplyDeleteSeems to be OK now.
I feel your pain. We get Macafee free through our cable company (well i guess not free as internet coverage in $40/mth..LOL)
ReplyDeleteGlad everything is fixed now - I'm sorry that you had to go through that. My husband's work laptop was infected at the beginning of the year and every time we thought it was cleaned up, the thing came back. I agree that Google should be ashamed of themselves!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up, Tina. I do hope that I don't encounter this malicious software. It's bad enough that I get spam.
ReplyDeleteMy mother had gone through your whole process last year, except that she is not a guru at anything except for working her butt off. so she did one of those tupid pop-up ads that made it LOOK like something popped up from the computer itself (to her); she clicked galore and... ENTERED HER CREDIT CARD INFORMATION!!! Cost her $50 to PROTECT her computer (She thought, and of course it was a hoax) and I couldn't get the stupid program off. I wish I could remember what it was. But its' name I think it had Windows in it; So she thought she was doing the right thing. If my otherwise smart mother would fall for these fake spyware programs, I wonder at how many people they scam in reality. It is so sad.
ReplyDeleteThe credit card company wouldn't take the $50 charge off because she willingly entered it. I wish there was way the credit card company could have a policy against these fake 'companies' who scam people for profit.
And now we had to buy my mom a new laptop because the old computer with this stupid program never ran the same again!! I told her to NEVER CLICK ANYTHING again, HA we'll see how that goes.
Your post it important and I wish there was some more awareness out there of these popups that are really mal-ware. At a time when people are panicking about their computers (such as blogger being doown), this is the perfect time for thos malware/hijackers to take advantage of innocent people.
sorry for the rant. Makes me mad!!
And the smoke detecter beeped incessantly for 24 hours, till my husband replaced the battery for the second time in aweek, with the extension ladder, his body stretching dangerously over.. So when the second replacement did not work he ripped it out of the ceiling. WONDERFUL
Marie...Thanks for the comment...I loved the story about the smoke detector. We once had one that kept beeping even after I ripped the battery out of it. I called the fire department because I wanted to go to sleep (I'd been up over 24 hours with a sick child and I knew if I went to sleep and there was a fire, I'd NEVER wake up.) Any way the FD came, stood scratching their heads, took the thing off the ceiling, and I could still here it beeping two blocks away as they drove off. I suspect a sledge hammer may have been called on to shut it up. Anyway, I found that SPYBOT did successsfully FINALLY remove that program, and I'm back to normal operations.
ReplyDeleteHope you're enjoying your silence.