Twice this week I get an alarm from Avast antivirus that a threat has been blocked. I am a member, but I got hit once in the process of signing in and once when I was idle for too long and opened a link to a thread in anther tab. This makes five or six times in the last year. It kind of sucks that I don’t trust my favorite website. I can only image how much of a problem this would be for a non-member. It must drive newcomers away in droves.
AdBlock
Yeah, AdBlock. There is no reason not to use it.
Members don’t get ads.
Neither do AdBlock users, and Adblock is free. Though I note that the OP is a charter member, and still got attacked…
Did you miss the part where the OP was logged out and got pinged in the process of trying to log in again?
I got nailed while surfing this site last week. AVG alerted me that it had caught a virus and quarantined it, but shortly afterward I found I couldn’t open any programs or files. I’d get a non-functioning “Open with” dialog . Worst virus I’ve ever had. Couldn’t avoid it even rebooting in safe mode. I finally had to wipe the drive and reinstall back to like new using the CD that came with my computer. I prefer to use IE and therefore don’t have Adblock but if it happens again I’ll probably start launching Firefox with Adblock while at the Dope.
Is there some strange board here with porno or something that I haven’t found yet? I’ve never had any trouble with this site (well, not that I know of…)
I’ve been here eight years and I never had any trouble before either, and I’m a prolific poster/reader and spend a lot of time here. Plus I’m a Charter Member and don’t get ads.
There’s a logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc, after this therefore because of this.In other words malware popping its head up when you click a link here doesn’t have to mean that this board is the source. Of course, it could be, it just ain’t necessarily so.
And I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that the problems are as frequent and pervasive as some posters seem to suggest. Sure, one rogue ad is one too many, but if non-members really were getting hit left, right and center by malware when they visited the board it would certainly be reflected by a significant decrease in traffic and staff have given no indication that this is the case.
No board is 100% free of this problem but I’d lay good odds that the SDMB is no less safe than other boards and probably far safer than most.
Yeah, I think the board is well administered and I’m not blaming the way the board is run for the virus I got. Not at all. It could happen anywhere. I just thought I’d mention it in case the description of the virus I got might be helpful, especially since I picked it up about the same time as the OP got his.
Since you couldn’t git rid of the virus in safe mode, I wonder if you were surfing the net under your administrative account. If so, that could have been your problem.
Possibly. I don’t have any virus protection at all, and never have had problems (though I do use Adblock with IE—yes, contrary to popular opinion, IE has an adblocker) in 14 years. Some people are just luckier/unluckier than others.
I have reported this, of course, and we appreciate hearing about this.
And a reminder that we need as much information as possible, to find it and eliminate it.
No, I wasn’t in as administrator. Haven’t been since I first set up the computer three years ago.
In my case the trouble was that I couldn’t do anything once the virus hit. I couldn’t open any programs, files or logs. And because I knew that wiping my drive and reinstalling everything would take a while I didn’t do that until the next day, so I really didn’t have much to report other than that it had occurred, which I’m doing now. If it’s any help I believe Dec. 23 or 24th is when it hit, depending on whatever time of night it was.
I’m curious if you could get to your files in safe mode with your Administrator account. Most viruses I’ve dealt with are confined to the limited account with which they were acquired.
I might have, but for some reason it didn’t occur to me to try. Once I discovered the virus was still functioning even in safe mode I figured I was hosed and the only alternative was to wipe the disk and reinstall to new. If it happens again I’ll give that a try.
Yep, that’s what I was shooting at. When I caught a killer virus on my XP machine earlier this year, I was running as Admin. Just stupid on my part. It won’t happen again.
You know, now that I think about it, it’s entirely possible that I’ve been running in administrator mode all along. I’ll have to look into it.
I just got hit for the 3rd time.
Today, the I was in BBQ Pit and I had just opened a thread about abortion (looks like a thread opened in March) on the 1st page. Then my IE closed and my system was hosed. This was 2-3 hours ago.