I've been hacked!!!!!!

[caged]

Nobody has mentioned McAfee. I used to have Norton, but as previously stated, it was a huge resource hog. So I got rid of that and my IP offers McAfee for free, so I'm using that now. Any opinions on it's effectiveness?

It's effective. Of course, Norton is effective too if you have the right product for your needs and keep the definitions up to date (critical with any product). McAfee can eat up CPU cycles in a hurry though, but that's somewhat of a requirement. The more popular an anti-virus program is the more viruses and malware are designed to circumvent them, requiring the antivirus software to be more thorough (which can eat cpu cycles). Good protection does not come free (and I'm not talking money).

There's no harm in trying McAfee. It's much, much better than using nothing at all.

I use Microsoft Security Essentials, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to the average user. It is not the most comprehensive security product available, but it's much better than nothing.

 

[Gardner808]

I put McAfee on the same level as Norton. Don't use it. Remove it at the first opportunity.

 

[MoonDance]

Does anyone use superantispyware? (my computer guy installed it) I have it and malwarebytes and it seems to pick up more than malwarebytes.

+1 for SuperAntiSpyware - recommend very highly!
SAS is amazing software. I recently had to clean up my brothers computer - it had everything you can catch from social networking, pr0n sites, you name it. He had over 500 different malicious things on his pc. I'm sure it counted some malicious cookies, but I've never seen a computer so infected before, and I've seen a lot. He had rogue security proggies, malware, spyware, rootkits, browser hijackers, dialers and keyloggers. It was tore up from the floor up.

Connecting to the internet or running any exe was impossible - ran SAS from safe mode and it cleaned for 6 hours (slow computer) but on the other side of its long scan there was only one residual baddie left and Malwarebytes caught it on its first scan. I wiped it and reinstalled everything, but at the start it wouldn't even boot up successfully.

My brother had paid for a anti-virus program but as soon as his subscription expired he had zero protection. Free is great and never expires, leaving you flapping in the wind.

My system must haves are SuperAntiSpyware, Malwarebytes, Avira or Microsoft Security Essentials, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Hijack This (or whatever its called now)

As someone else said, good practices are the best defense, but no one should be computing online without running multiple protection softwares and educating themselves in the basics of there use.

Macs vs PC is a matter of preference only. Neither is bulletproof.

 

[Morandir835]

Rift (sir?) depending on how old your comp is really determines how much any anti virus program bogs it down... If you're running an old duel core with fsb, it will kill the system on heavy load.... A newer quad core with either hyper transport or qpi not so much....

 

[caged]

Out of curiosity, how many people here actually work in an IT department?

 

[Gardner808]

<---- I run one.

 

[Rift]

Rift (sir?) depending on how old your comp is really determines how much any anti virus program bogs it down... If you're running an old duel core with fsb, it will kill the system on heavy load.... A newer quad core with either hyper transport or qpi not so much....

Really what I was referring to is the fact that 90% of the virus scanners out there run crap in the background that has nothing to do with virus scanning. They all love to run about 20 other applications you never asked for nor wanted in the first place. Why does my virus scanner need to have utilities for checking the speed of my hard drives, or tell me when to defragment my hard drive (something that is already built into windows) these tasks have nothing to do with virus prevention. This in turn can make CPU sensitive tasks (like in my case rendering of animations, image processing, and model rendering) take longer then it should no matter what kind of computer you have.

 

[starsong]

<---- I run one.

Well then we have a winner! A man of many talents.

I have always practiced safe browsing & email practices. And I know the Mac isn't immune, just mostly ignored for now. I should probably move off this PC and onto that full-time. It's just there's a couple programs I prefer on the PC that don't have a good Mac version (like Quicken). And Pogo games run better on a PC


edit: I gotta stop quoting people that start with an arrow pointing to them, cuz it always ends up pointing back to me.

 

[pmos69]

<---- I run one.

Dito.
An IT security department.

 

[Morandir835]

Not disagreeing with you Rift sir, just know that avast and the like don't use anything but what's needed... Yet on slow comps, it eats up the little resources it has by running... As of right now after turning off F@H on my cpu, I'm only using 1-3% of my cpu and 1401mb of ram... So running avast means nothing to system performance....

 

[starsong]

Dito.
An IT security department.

Oooops, a tie. However I'm feeling very happy to have several knowledgeable people to get advice & answers from.

 

[caged]

Not disagreeing with you Rift sir, just know that avast and the like don't use anything but what's needed... Yet on slow comps, it eats up the little resources it has by running... As of right now after turning off F@H on my cpu, I'm only using 1-3% of my cpu and 1401mb of ram... So running avast means nothing to system performance....

Aren't you able to disable or simply not install all that extra junk or have they stupefied the install so much it becomes extremely difficult to do what should be simple tasks in the name of ease of use?

 

[x3x]

Last night some malware hidden in my chinese "windows" clone OS activated, hijacking my system, and among other problems, sent out some phishing e-mails from my yahoo.com address to everyone in my address book.

I apologize to anyone who received any e-mail from my yahoo.com e-mail address. Especially if you opened it thinking it was the promised vape-iversary sale e-mail blast!! It is NOT, and the official e-mail blast will not be coming from a yahoo account, but from our bloogplanet.com address. Do not open any mail from my leaford@yahoo account, or do not follow the link if you do. I don't know where the link goes, but it CAN'T be anything good.

For the record, official Bloog e-mails will always come from an @bloogplanet.com web address, and e-mails from me will always come from my leaford@e-smoker-forever.com address. Neither I nor Bloog use yahoo.com addresses for business or personal use.

Again, my aplogies to ANYONE who received an e-mail from leaford@yahoo, and you have received one, do not open it, discard it unread. And NEVER open any unknown attachements or follow any unknown links in any unsolicited e-mail you receive, EVEN if it is from a trusted source.

The vape-iversary e-mail blast WILL go out Tuesday, and it will be from an @bloogplanet.com address. I apologize for that delay.

[EDIT]Oh and for the record, I do NOT have access to the Bloog e-mail list, and the Bloog e-mail list was NOT affected by this. Only my personal contact list. Unfortunately, those of you who have communicated directly with me via e-mail are in my contacts.

Get Malwarebytes install

 

[Morandir835]

That all depends on which program you're installing Caged (sir or Ms.?).

 

[caged]

That all depends on which program you're installing Caged (sir or Ms.?).

I understand that, but we're talking about Norton and McAfee.

 

[starsong]

I had the choice on McA of disabling/not installing certain modules, like Site Advisor. It complains afterwards that I am not fully protected, but that's easy to ignore.

 

[Morandir835]

I haven't installed either program in a long time, I can tell you it didn't use to allow it Caged (you never answered if it was sir or Ms.)... Sorry, but I'm of little help on those....

 

[caged]

I had the choice on McA of disabling/not installing certain modules, like Site Advisor. It complains afterwards that I am not fully protected, but that's easy to ignore.

Pretty much what I thought. Just make sure you have web protection and e-mail protection enabled (along with the traditional anti-virus). If there's a firewall, it might be better than the native windows firewall as well.

 

[MoonDance]

<------ Ex-ISP and IT help desk jockey, DIY computer builder, Family & Friends Guru, with a pinch of Systems Administrator for good measure which means I know enough to be very dangerous. ; )

A clean machine isn't terribly hard to protect with whats out there free to use.
It's like brushing your teeth, just make sure you do it. =D

I feel like I should say something about better mousetraps,
but nothing comes to mind.

Edit: Oh yeah meant to mention that gamers are most likely to be impacted by any decrease in machine performance that a business user might never notice. Gaming has actually been the reason for every upgrade I've ever done.

 

[Morandir835]

Exactly Ms. MoonDance. Do you prefer nvidia or ati?