Posted on 01/29/2009 9:57:53 AM PST by Nachum
The message that popped into Laurie Gale's Facebook inbox last month seemed harmless enough -- a friend had seen a video of Ms. Gale and had sent a link so Ms. Gale could view it. The link led to a video site that prompted her to update her video software, which she did.
"Within seconds, everything started shutting itself down," says Ms. Gale, a 37-year-old lamp-works artist from Versailles, Ky. Ms. Gale's new Dell Inspiron laptop had been infected with malicious software, or malware, that has spread through social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
"I cried for an hour," Ms. Gale says. It took a trip to the local computer repair shop and several phone calls with Dell customer-service representatives for her to restore the computer to its factory settings. "It was three days of torture."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
That’s a very stupid remark to make. There are lots of people that do for a variety of reasons which don’t appear stupid.
It’s an ego thing. Sometimes not very bright when you realize what the consequences might be.
There is an FR Facebook group. It’s a great way for me to keep up with fraternity brothers and high school friends.
I have more friends than my kids and it really irritates them.
same here
I was at a friends and they joined this face book and within days they received tons of messages saying will you be my friend?
She never went on it again as God only knows what complete whack jobs are asking her to be a friend and who she has no intention of meeting.
One weirdo asked to be her friend and kept sending photo’s of herself and just kept talking about herself.
She said that if she wanted to know who she listens to on her way to school she would ask, LOL
I want to be sympathetic, but it may be that little windows popping up from nowhere telling you to install system software might be considered just a little suspicious by anyone over the age of ten...
Now she’ll yearn for the good old days when you trusted people face to face and ended up with the clap.
Exactly!
You are missing the point. Wasn’t the video sent by a friend who she likely trusted?
I’ve never had the slightest urge to join any of those things either.
The absolute best way to deal with this is to do a series of backups with external hard drives. I always keep several generations going, and all I have to do is either restore back on the original hard drive, or boot from a copy. Either way, I can be back up and running in minutes...
Backups are wonderful things...
There is no smart reason to download unknown software. Ever.
I never go to view any damn video that people won’t tell me what I’m watching.
“YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!!!”
“LOLOLOLOLOLOL!”
Even if it isn’t hazardous, it’s still a chain letter kind of thing.
TELL me what I’m going to see.
I get sick of seeing emails and bulletins (and even FR threads) that are JUST a video clip saying “check this out”.
I need a summary of what something is before I ever make a hop.
Oh..., and on top of the complete hard drive backups, which include everything on your hard drive, I also run several “user” backups, too — which only contain personal user files. I can do restores on either basis...
Java means never having to ASK you for permission to load software on your computer.
Umm, no, it *appeared* to have been sent by a friend who she trusted. Just like all the phishing scams trying to get your PayPal password appear to come from PayPal. Seriously, if you aren’t clear on this, you should get clear quickly, before something bad happens to you.
The only danger in this is revealed only too well by this story, the illusion that the Internet can become a Safe Zone with a Trusted App.
In an age where hardly anyone recognizes the looming absence of Extended Families, it can aid in creating the illusion of a functional extended family or community, and that is no more dangerous than those who think reading and commenting on FreeRepublic alone is true engaged society or action.
If those things are acknowledged, it's mostly harmless, nonessential and interesting as a tool for mapping personal influence.
As a substitute for "the society of one another" is falls short of unrealistic expectations.
Tools, Internet Options, Advanced. Check and uncheck boxes as necessary.
If a window comes up on a strange site and says it wants to install something, DON’T CLICK ANYTHING. Not yes, not no. Use Task Manager to close your browser.
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