I went into my office today to work on a paper on my computer (a Dell Dimension Pentium 4 running XP) and discovered that sometime between Wednesday afternoon and today, a picture of a scantily clad woman was set as my desktop picture. I have never seen this picture before in my life, and it has no relevance to anything I’ve been working on on that computer. When I left on Wednesday, the desktop image was the standard XP default.
I have an office mate, but I don’t think he would have done it. Is there a virus or piece of spyware that is going around now that can alter your desktop picture automatically?
Absolutely, I had a virus on my old computer that would reset my desktop every couple days to a huge blue-screen warning that I had a virus, and I better go to this website if I wanted to clear up the problem.
The virus I had was called Virtumonde or something close to that. That one was a bitch, even after running MalwareBytes and Spybot Search and Destroy, they would clear the virus, but the damn thin had buried itself into my registry so it would re-infect my computer every 2 days even after cleaning out the main virus programs.
PS: after some research I found out the website they linked to was basically a fake too, set up to steal your credit info once you bought the “cleaning” program.
Yeah, check that first. With the virus I had, upon loading my original background on startup, then 2-3 seconds later it would splash the “You have a spyware/malware, go to this website link” on top of my original desktop background.
Oh, the fun you can have with those Random pictures on the background, the CD-ROM tray opening at random and the computer going, “Oooh, feeeeeeed meeeeeeeee”, etc.
When you leave your computer, do you log out/lock your screen? If no, 98% probability of just a prank, and 100% probability that you need to learn to lock your screen when you leave your computer.
Heh. Normally I wouldn’t. But I am a doctoral student/instructor at a large university and I have students who could come by my office at any time (my office mate, also an instructor, has an open-door policy for his students). Yes, I know “we’re all adults here” is probably the best reaction I could have to this, but I still don’t want to project the image that I stare at buxom beach babes all day.
IME, if you keep repeating this, and act offended if questioned, she will eventually believe you, although she will still wonder how her sister’s picture got there.
Random pictures on the background, the CD-ROM tray opening at random and the computer going, “Oooh, feeeeeeed meeeeeeeee”, etc.