[Hidden-tech] Can anyone help my mom with a spammy virus?

Chris Hoogendyk hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu
Thu May 19 09:24:14 EDT 2011


On 5/17/11 10:41 PM, Shel Horowitz, Ethical/Green Marketing Expert wrote:
> She writes:
>
> At 11:30 PM +0000 5/17/11, gloyoshi at comcast.net wrote:
>> A crazy thing is happning on my computer. I'm getting unasked for,
>> full pages of graphic porn -- gay, s&  M, etc, unasked and
>> uninvited. It changes my browser to Firefox, also unasked for.
>> what's going on and do I eliminate it?
>
> She is on a Mac running OS 10.4. I believe her usual browser is
> Safari. She's not very tech-savvy, but if anyone has a good idea to
> try, I can try to help her through it.
>
> Please Reply to All so she and I are both in the loop.
>
> Thanks!

Not to be messed with, especially if she uses her Mac for any shopping, banking, bill paying, or any 
other critical personal information related things.

Unless you are a techy enough Mac computer person to be confident that you can resolve her problems 
based on the suggestions coming from the group, I would take the computer to someone who can 
definitively resolve the issue and tell her how it happened and how to not let it happen again. I 
don't know if the Apple Store's Genius Bar does this sort of thing, but when they do 
troubleshooting, it is free. The cost is for repairs once the troubleshooting has been done (if you 
had a hardware problem and needed parts, or if you needed to add some software that cost something). 
Call them and ask. If they do this, that would be my first choice. If not, I might try Yes Computers.

We haven't had to deal with much in the way of Mac trojans. The scary thing is that this type of 
software goes out of its way to insinuate itself into the system and make it difficult to remove. On 
PCs it can be such that the only solution is to erase and reinstall the operating system (McAfee and 
other tools having proved incapable of removing the particular bad stuff). I don't know if any of 
the new stuff hitting Macs has attained that level of nastiness, but you really don't want to take a 
chance. In principle, there's the potential for screen scraping and keystroke logging that could 
result in personal and/or financial information being sent to someone who would misuse it to steal 
her identity and/or money.


-- 
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Chris Hoogendyk

-
    O__  ---- Systems Administrator
   c/ /'_ --- Biology&  Geology Departments
  (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst

<hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>

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