When a virus is not a virus and the cure can be illness: I hate viruses!
Rant alert! I hate viruses in all their forms, shapes and manifestations. I hate viruses that transform us into helpless, painful, sneezing, coughing heaps of uselessness. I hate even more the kind of viruses that damage my best friend – my trusted, aged Dell – and sour my relationship with my live in technical genius, editor, favoured debate sparring partner, staff writer and husband. Let me tell you why I am so vexed (you know that ladies do not get angry, right!).
Couple of months ago I wanted to download a free and very useful writing editor. I went on the website, clicked on the link and it all started happening; or so I thought. Once the download was complete my computer started behaving strangely, telling me that I have about a million viruses, worms and other digital vermin and that I have to pay a company to get rid of it. Yep, you guessed it! The programme was the virus itself. Then John got started and after much frowning, using good, punchy four letter Anglo-Saxon origin words and threats to divorce me if I continue downloading any random and dangerous stuff, it was all good.
Until a week ago when I went on a website I frequent and all hell broke loose. My computer was saying that it is closing, warnings were flashing and…it did cease. Oh dear! This time it was even worse; let’s just say that our family had it really bad for couple of hours. I was terrified my computer won’t ever work again; John was trying to figure out what to use to clean it; and our ten year old kept going from one parent to the other – mainly to bring bad news and be shouted at.
This is when I decided that enough is enough! Are there any virus protection and cleaning programmes out there? Yep, there is Norton 360, McAfee and AVG; there is Spyware Doctor and Malwarebytes – I want them all! This is where it started getting really complicated; wanting them all is all too well, but I needed to select some of these programmes; and to select I needed to get educated about computer viruses.
I learned that not all viruses are ‘born equal’ and that in fact most of what I thought was viruses are not viruses at all – viruses are only programmes that can reproduce themselves and most of what is around is malware. Malware is not straight forward either – these programmes can destroy your hardware in variety of imaginative ways and cause loads of other damage. To top it all, I was puzzled to learn that not all virus protection programmes are all they seem; that there are programmes that pretend to be virus protection but in fact are the virus itself. Thinking about it, this is what I had the first time around.
It was clear that a computer virus ninja I am not likely to become and this is best left to people who understand these things (John has been on the case and now I seem to be protected). What I started thinking about is what kind of person could spend so much time, effort and talent to create something that destroys value rather than creating it? Research shows that computer viruses and hacking cost the worldwide economy $1.6 trillion.
Then I had my answer; well, almost. Have you heard about the Dark Avenger? Until very recently I hadn’t either but now I know that he was a virus writer from Sofia, Bulgaria in the early 1990s. For that matter, in the early 1990s writing computer viruses appears to have been a favourite pass time for many young Bulgarian software whizzes. Now I wish I never asked!
Anyway, do you use any virus protection and what?
That really sucks. I don’t use protection on my Mac but I haven’t had a virus either.
@Jai: People say that Macs are less susceptible. Worth checking and protecting, though.
That sounds awful. I’ve never had a virus that couldn’t be fixed with a simple system restore. However, I’ve noticed more and more that virus protection is inadequate to handle the viruses of today. It used to be that you shouldn’t open weird files. Now websites, social media and even the very programs you use can be compromised.
@Shaun: Yep. The last one arrived through the web and was a dangerous worm. It is hard to win in this viruses game, though – we intalled a detection programme and it doesn’t let me go on some websites because it is misreading innocent stuff for viruses.
I let my antivirus software expire….and contracted something really nasty that my husband had to fix. I now use bit defender.
@Super Frigalette: Wise to be protected; I suspect that this is one of the cases where prevention is better than cure.
Hi Maria, I use AVG as well. About 10 days ago I was visiting a blog and it set off the alarms on my laptop. It did indeed download a scam program. The virus I caught leads you to believe that you have hundreds of threats on your PC already and the only way you will remove them is by purchasing their virus software. It was very nasty and took my techie husband 2 hours to research and clean up for me.
These viruses are getting more and more tricky everyday.
@Tackling Our Debt: It sounds like the one I contracted. Yep, it apparently finds its way into the ‘deep recesses’ of your computer (this is the most technical I can get, I am afraid, I am a social scientist after all) and is really tricky to get rid off. Whoever thought that this is a good business model (because it asks you to pay for the threats to be removed and I suspect some poor suckers do pay)?
We have dealth with viruses twice just lately. Very annoying, aggravating and such a time waster.
@Dr. Dean: Value destroyers, pure and simple. When I researched the matter I came across an interview with the Dark Avenger (this is the Bulgarian chappy who wrote these clever viruses for fun) who said that ‘destroying data is fun’. Twisted or what?
Virus/malware protection is essential on a Windows PC and should really be factored into the cost. It is a pity that Microsoft didn’t realise the vulnerability of the system when they designed it but the registry is a magnet for such things and where there is the possibility of some malevolent action, it will occur. Viruses have become a major business both for the producers and the protectors. Capturing your bank details can be very profitable.
You can use a Mac which, as they are now Unix under the hood, are inherently less risky but also a lot more expensive and won’t run the bulk of software. Unless you are heavily into graphics, you may as well go to Linux which is far cheaper to install and run. And Linux is particularly good for scientific computing. I use it most of the time (and always for email) but even there, it is possible to have an insecure setup if you install out of the box.
@John: I would love a Mac! Am I allowed one?
Maria – “would you like Fries with that?”
@Elaine: Ha-ha! I am likely to end up with the Fries only (let’s see what he says).