Weekend Open Forum: Have you been infected by malware recently?

[Archean]

Last time I got any sort of infection was back in 1992 (incidentally it was caused by another 'careless' user). So I may be extremely lucky, or cautious, whichever way one may take this. But the fact is, I never use any sort of toolbars + or software from unknown sites or which I wouldn't be using.

 

[Mr Zea]

Once, when my wife thought it was a good idea to click on a flashy banner ad! I put this down (like virtually all other computer problems) to "user error"!

 

[Cota]

Had been years coming to think of it, but yet again I work fixing peep's PC's

 

[Trillionsin]

Would I be ignorant if I were to say that the two posters before me are ignorant?

I don't know if you would be ignorant or not. Troll maybe. Trying to start drama..definitely. A question was asked and answered, simple as that. The question was "Have you been infected by malware recently?" and I answered "Nope. Next question" If you had wanted me to elaborate on that answer, I would have been more than happy to oblige by asking me to do so in a respectable manner. You could have even not said anything and just answered the question yourself. As I write this, I see you did not answer the question yourself which if my previous post added nothing to the discussion, yours added even less.

I work on lots of PCs too, and I've had a number of people tell me they have never had any malware or viruses, but when I install or scan their computer with antivirus software there is almost always SOMETHING, whether how minimal or sever it is.

My point here is that EVERYONE has experienced some type of malware and didnt know. Now I thought I was being fair with my statement... and with everyone else replying, yours is the only one I felt like replying to because of your subtle attitude that I read your post with, whether it was intended or not.

Everyone's had to deal with some type of malware.... if you run Windows, you have whether you know it or now.

 

[Guest]

I use a Mac so I am 100% protected so the answer is no , suxs to be Windows users installing loads of security programs just to even check a email for browse the web.(n)

 

[Camikazi]

Would I be ignorant if I were to say that the two posters before me are ignorant?

I don't know if you would be ignorant or not. Troll maybe. Trying to start drama..definitely. A question was asked and answered, simple as that. The question was "Have you been infected by malware recently?" and I answered "Nope. Next question" If you had wanted me to elaborate on that answer, I would have been more than happy to oblige by asking me to do so in a respectable manner. You could have even not said anything and just answered the question yourself. As I write this, I see you did not answer the question yourself which if my previous post added nothing to the discussion, yours added even less.

I work on lots of PCs too, and I've had a number of people tell me they have never had any malware or viruses, but when I install or scan their computer with antivirus software there is almost always SOMETHING, whether how minimal or sever it is.

My point here is that EVERYONE has experienced some type of malware and didnt know. Now I thought I was being fair with my statement... and with everyone else replying, yours is the only one I felt like replying to because of your subtle attitude that I read your post with, whether it was intended or not.

Everyone's had to deal with some type of malware.... if you run Windows, you have whether you know it or now.

Actually that is not true, it is not hard at all to avoid malware if you know what to look for, it is very possible to have had a Windows machine for years and not had any malware or viruses. Remember the question is not whether you have EVER had malware just whether you have had any recently, the answers to the 2 questions can be complete opposites. I scan my machines weekly and have anti malware running and have not had any malware or viruses in the last 5 years (at least) but I did get viruses when I first got a computer and had almost no knowledge of things.

 

[Darkshadoe]

I use a Mac so I am 100% protected so the answer is no , suxs to be Windows users installing loads of security programs just to even check a email for browse the web.(n)

http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/none/295168-the-ten-most-dangerous-mac-viruses

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/...ter-virus-indicates-mac-users-no-longer-safe/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/mac-virus-apple_n_1625110.html

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/04/mac-os-x-report-virus-infects-600000-computers/

Mac has gotten popular.

 

[Guest]

None in the past year. I use MSE, Google Chrome and common sense. I don't think I've had an infection since Vista SP1.

 

[Doctor John]

Nope!

 

[ROBO731]

I got a rootkit on my laptop, but I don't have a lot of important stuff on it so I haven't removed it. I don't notice it doing anything and if I ever feel like it, I could just install a clean OS.

 

[Ubwarcher07]

Pretty sure I'm always infected with something, even with my layers of security. Nothing particularly major worth noting as of recent though.

 

[Guest]

I was given a michine at my workplace. The previous user had turned off UAC and a couple of weeks ago, 6 months into the job I was attacked by a serious trojan which redirected my browser, caused search engines to want to open a file rather than redirect to the results and more worryingly it turned off Intune Endpoint Protection and my Firewall.

Wound back the PC and got another week out of it before it all started again so had to reinstall.

Strangely I suspect there was a dormant item on the machine and the trigger was visiting a web site with 3rd party adverts ("Cracked" as it happens).

This needs dealing with on a wider level. Adverts and JavaScript should not be causeing these issues.

 

[Guest]

Actually I have seen 3 cases of malware this past week and another case a few weeks back. In 2 of the cases a user downloaded and installed programs that contained malware. In those cases I had to follow longer malware removal processes but I did remove the malware. One case the malware got partialy installed but anti-virus stopped a full blown attack; that was fairly easy to remove. The last case, the malware was limited to one user's profile, we just deleted and recreated the profile to resolve it. The clients were Windows Vista, 7 and 2008 R2. 4 malware attacks and 4 clean computers.

 

[wiyosaya]

Nope. Not even any notification of detection of any malware. As others have noted, it is pretty easy to protect against malware these days.

 

[kbit13]

Yes. I use avast and I run boot time scans. A lot of these malware are very good at hiding and from my experience a fair number of computers are infected and people always tell me " Oh, I run this and that and my computer is clean! " Yet I always seem to find their computers infected with viruses and malware! So I;m glad so many of you seem to think you are protected or I wouldn;t have so many computers to fix!

 

[Guest]

I did found something hidden in my USB flash drive..
One is a folder name 'xavx' and the other two were 'dan3606' & 'dan3608'..Both contain an executable files. I can only see them upon running Linux Os...

 

[TorturedChaos]

I haven't got anything in quite a while that I'm aware off. I may have a few minor ones floating around on my computer but between Avast!, Spybot S&D, and Comodo firewall I feel pretty safe.
And I don't have very good browser habits. I visit all sorts of questionable sites .

Surprisingly neither has my parents computer that my two youngest siblings use.
It was Ubuntu for a while - so that's kind hard to screw up w/o having any root access. But my dad got tired and got a copy of Win7 and security wise it seems to be much more stable than xp. Also harder to screw up .