Drsolly wrote: > Daughter.1 has picked up a nasty, that wants her to pay for an antivirus, > and keeps nagging at her. She already had Norton, but that doesn't seem to > want to know. I don't know if she's updated it - probably not. > > I didn't fancy wrestling with the malware to try to remove it, or go back > to some previous checkpoint (there probably isn't one). > > I offered her two solutions. > > 1) reinstall XP. She doesn't have the CDs (I don't think they came with > the computer). I suspect you can't buy XP now. Vista will cost her about a > hundred pounds, and then she'll need to buy a new word processor, I'd > guess. Probably another hundred or two.
Have her run the free version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (http://www.malwarebytes.org/) to remove the fake antivirus. It's surprisingly effective for removal. Has a better UI for novices than ComboFix and updates very frequently. Then dump Norton and install either the newish free Microsoft Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/) or Avira's free AntiVir (http://www.free-av.com/) Also switch her to Firefox and make sure she has the latest Adobe Flash/Reader. Tell her not to skip any of their updates. Ted Pham _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
