Spyware / Adware Horror Stories

[basstard]

Night of the living dead


I have operated various computers and Windows versions and surfed the Net without ever actually using an antivirus program for 11 years. Well, yesterday morning my luck ran out and it all caught up with me. Last week I downloaded and used a file-sharing program on my computer for the first time. It seemed great at first, but looking back I think one of those "dead" programs that I downloaded with it wasn't actually dead at all.

My wife woke me up yesterday morning and told me she had to restart the computer. An ad had popped up that said, "A major virus could be on your computer, download from us and we'll fix it..." Being familiar with pop-ups, I didn't think much of it, until four hours later when I went to use my computer.

There were 47 Internet Explorer windows open and something was trying to open more. My system was almost at a standstill. Even a simple click of the mouse took two minutes to process. I disabled and deleted the P2P application, but the offending program kept trying to restart every few seconds. All the icons on my desktop were selected, and I couldn't do a darn thing about it.

Safe Mode had no effect on the selected shortcuts or pop-ups. I tried deleting all my nonsystem-critical software, but to no effect. My system resources were maxed out almost instantly, and something was hijacking Internet Explorer. Every time I tried to visit a Web site for antivirus software, I was redirected and treated to 20 more windows of adware.

Out of options, I rebooted and reinstalled Windows XP Professional. After everything was up and running again, I maxed out the security and firewall settings in Windows, then downloaded a reputable antivirus program and ran it. I was amazed what it found afterwards--a virus that didn't care about operating in stealth, because it didn't have to. In only a few hours, it had infected almost every resource in my computer.

The antivirus program I downloaded ended up finding (and deleting) 5,706 infected files from my hard drive. A Trojan horse had infected my system and sent at least 17MB of information back over the Internet. Luckily, I have never used this computer to process any financial or sensitive information. Still, I was amazed how fast the virus tore through my computer and disabled it to the point of no return, without showing any mercy whatsoever.

Needless to say, I've now installed more security updates, firewall protection, pop-up blocking, and antivirus enabling in the last day than I have ever done in an entire decade. Believe me, from this point forward, I will never run my computer without this kind of protection. I even bought an extra 256MB of memory in anticipation of handling the extra load of the active filtering and virus-protection software, so I wouldn't tax my system resources.

I always thought novice users were the only ones who clicked on obviously fake ads, and if they downloaded a virus, it was probably their own fault. I thought that if they did, it would probably operate silently and they would never find out until someone else was buying lap dances with their stolen credit card information. Well, it turns out I was the naive one. Those 11 years of arrogant Web use came back to bite me in the butt and destroy almost every file on my computer. Never again will I take that chance!


- Monroe, Michigan, U.S.A.

[basstard]

Silent assassin

A friend on instant messenger made me a program to hack one of my favorite games. So of course, being gullible, I accepted the file. I left my computer to go to the bathroom and when I came back, my desktop was blue, my icons were smaller, and there was a pop-up with the message "Are you an idiot?" I confronted my friend, who stayed online long enough to tell me I had been infected with Omerta before he signed off.

I tried opening an antivirus, but was blocked. I tried reverting to the last known good configuration and was blocked again. I rebooted. No luck. Finally I rebooted in Safe Mode and went to Trend Micro's Web site to use their HouseCall feature, which took care of everything. To this day, I still don't know if it really was Omerta, or if this guy was fooling me.

[basstard]

Code breaker


My friend bought a copy of Microsoft Word but lost the registration code required to install it. Not knowing what else to do, we decided to get a CD code from the Net. After all, my friend had paid for the program in the first place and wasn't about to buy a new copy.

We went to a software "cracks" site I thought was safe because I had used it before for similar reasons. Unfortunately, this time my friend wasn't so lucky. I assume the site exploited a hole in my friend's outdated version of Internet Explorer because the site downloaded so many types and iterations of spyware and adware, I can't even begin to list them.

Luckily for us, my friend had McAfee antivirus software and additional spyware protection. Malware scanning and cleaning mopped up much of the mess, but not everything. Even when I tried to go online to download Spybot - Search & Destroy and other spyware-removal programs, I was redirected to a page housed on my friend's hard drive that advertised a Web service.

Finally, I was able to use my portable version of Firefox off the USB drive and download the necessary tools to erase most of the malware...or so I thought. When we tried restoring the system, nothing happened at all; the programs were still there!

It's now been more than a month since the initial incident, and my friend's real-time scanner still catches a Trojan horse sometimes. I think I'm going to have to wipe his hard drive for the sake of his privacy. I know he has some information he wouldn't want published for everyone to see.


- Rochester Hills, Michigan, U.S.A.

[dominicuz]

delikado talaga spyware ... nde basta basta naalis to ng antivirus ..

nadale minsan ung dating pc ko niyan ... dahil me nakialam ...

pinangalis ko lang Hijackthis ... nde to panlinis or pang alis ng spyware ..
lalabas lang jan ung mga nagtatagong program na kaduda duda .. na nde lumalabas sa background process or ms config ..

delete mo lang ung mga un .. then start running ur favorite antivirus and anti spyware para linisin ung kalat na ginawa nun ..

NOTE:  dapat me kakilala kayo na kasama na nakakaintindi kung di man kayo sanay .. magkamali kayo ng delete sira ang system niyo..

[basstard]

pinakamalalang nangyari sa akin ay napasukan ako ng spyware na napakahirap alisin dun lang pala sya nagtago sa windows restore point, so kinailangan kong i-deactivate and burahin lahat ng restore point ko ... and mga 200+ na spyware ang na-scan ng anti spyware ko ...