HI all,
Warning: possibly dumb question ahead.
Okay, to clarify, because it’s impossible to get everything in the subject line… My computer picked up a bad virus (searchab) right before I went on vacation. There was no time to do anything about it. I disconnected the computer right away and haven’t turned it on since; I got back yesterday.
My question is, what would happen if I used it for other things (graphics programs) for a couple of days until I’m able to take it in and get the virus off? It’s not connected, and I don’t plan to connect it until everything has been cleared. (Actually, while I was in the deserts of Eastern California with no wifi and no cell phone service, I decided that I was spending way too much time online anyway. I’m going on a serious net diet!!) Is it a problem just to use the computer itself when there’s a virus on it?
You probably shouldn’t use the computer to do anything you don’t want infected. I don’t know much about searchab except for what I’ve read in 2 or 3 posts on the internet. However, the last thing you want to do is to infect other files. Again, searchab may not necessarily infect files that you could then pass along, but why take a chance?
You should really try to get it cleaned up before you try to use it for anything.
It looks to me as though Searchab is a browser hi-jacker. On that basis, I would say that it is unlikely to do any harm if you use your computer offline. If you don’t run the browser it probably won’t even run, and even so, it can’t hi-jack you to anywhere when you are offline. In itself, a browser hi-jacker is really more annoying than dangerous, anyway. Of course it may well be that other things got installed along with Searchab, and could do worse damage if you went online, but most Malware, these days, even the really nasty stuff, depends on your being online to do its mischief. The days of kids writing viruses that that would erase your hard drive just for a joke are behind us. These days Malware is written by crooks who want to steal your bank details, but they can’t do that if you are offline. (I would make sure you are physically disconnected, with wireless turned off, though.
To get Malwarebytes or other cleanup software, download it onto a flash drive on another computer, and install it on the infected one from the flash drive (if you didn’t already know this).
It depends entirely on the nature of the virus. As above, the best-case scenario is that it can’t connect and therefore can’t accomplish its purpose.
Some viruses will happily sit there writing new viruses into your registry. They do advance through various stages of infection. The longer such a virus runs the harder it will be to completely eradicate in the future.
I would add, put Malwarebytes on a flash drive that has not recently been attached to the infected computer, and once you have inserted said flash drive into the infected computer, don’t use it on any other computer until you have this whole mess cleared up. Although unlikely in this case, another vector for computer viruses is flash drives, so you want to keep the flow of data solely towards the infected computer.
Is this really true?
Obviously there is more stealing of bank info these days, (as compared to, say 1998)—because many more people use online banking. But some of those bank criminals got their start as teenage hackers…and there’s nothing more fun to a nerdy kid than pulling what looks to him like a prank but is actually a serious attack–like erasing the hard drive.
I’m infuriated by malware and other viruses. So advertisers know what products I buy, where I live, neiboring towns et cetera, the government can spot check all my e-communkcations, but nothing can be done about these people stealing at the very least my property through conversion to their own purposes.
Plenty can be done, and there’s lots of advice in several threads here on the Dope including this one. But the computer user has to take some steps as well.
