Windows 10: Stupid Windows 10 Viruses

Unfortunately, most malware laden sites have adjusted to the younger market. Free video downloaders & apps to convert vids to music rank pretty high in malware distribution also. Add to movies sites claiming you need to download their "special player" in order to view the movie & you have quite a large distribution for malware to unsuspecting users. This isn't even factoring in the sites where you can get a "drive by" virus just by visiting the site due to a hidden macro command.

I read an interesting article a while back concerning porn sites & the percentage of malware they dish up. In a strange twist of what you would expect from perusing sites such as that, it turns out, the high profile porn sites actually work hard to keep their sites malware free since they don't want to risk chasing people away. Not to say you're any safer going there, as the infiltration of malware onto popular sites considered "safe" has proven.

 

Hi Borg, fellow ADDer here , senior also lol. Your exactly right about the popular pay porn sites , they do make an effort to keep malware at bay , i was mostly referring to the mass amounts of free stuff with constant flashing banners , those are scary .

 

LOL, at least there is no denial , all males must have some porn to survive or death is assured.

 

LOL. That's why is very useful to have an adblocker installer in your favourite browser.

 

The back up is a killer...

 

Hi there

If you download Music / video from Torrents ONLY EVER download the .AVI /.MP3 / .MKV / .FLAC / .MP4 etc. or the NATIVE file formats that can be played DIRECTLY by your player application.

NEVER download .EXE /.RAR /.ZIP /.MSI or other "Installer" files simply to download and play Audio / video.

Native format music and video can't realistically contain MALWARE if you use standard players to play them - so in this regard Torrent sites sometimes can actually be SAFER than conventional or "legit" web sites.

In general though - some RANSOMEWARE is hard to guard against these days by simple A/V software - so it's better to surf say separately on a VM so if it gets infected just ditch that VM and power on another one.

With good hardware these days the overhead of using a Virtual Machine is minimal -- just have a small VM with only the browser installed for Internet browsing. If you don't want to use a 2nd Windows licence just fire up say VMWARE PLAYER or VBOX and run a small LINUX VM with CHROME or FIREFOX or even OPERA as your browser.

IMO that's the best way - so it doesn't matter if the VM becomes infected with malware - just DELETE that VM and start another one.

Easy.

Web sites these days can all be compromised --even the BBC could get attacked --it hasn't successfully (as far as we know) been attacked yet but it's not impossible.

Bear in mind also that anything you want to keep PRIVATE - keep it OFF THE WEB -- as users of that well known "Sex Cheaters" site have found out to their cost (and probable horror) as well.

DO NOT RELY 100% on your A/V software -- most of them are fairly USELESS with the latest breed of "Rootkit" type infections.

I prefer the VM approach but if you DO get seriously infected my advice would be to simply install again CLEAN or after formatting the HDD restore from a known clean backup.

NO A/V software is ever 100% - and do not always believe the logs when it says successfully cleansed -- all it means is that particular A/V scan hasn't been able to find anything --which is totally different to saying that it doesn't exist.

Cheers
jimbo

 

I like to go on sites and read some of the threads when people are looking for help with malware infections , i can't believe some of the specs on their computers as it's jam packed with nasty stuff, they mostly have way out of date Java and Adobe stuff so no wonder.

I'll nuke my system if a "pup" gets loose on it (slight exaggeration), when i see some of the stuff on other peoples computers i freak out , my God, it's mind boggling .

The malware removal helpers are just swamped 24/7 and you can tell by some of the things they say , as soon as the infected computer user says i can now log in or it seems a little better now the helper will say "OK" , time to clean up then lol.

You can only do so much i suppose

 

I too have seen many clients with screwed up comps, but that's what keeps the business rolling

 

Yeah , if you make money repairing them no issue but a lot of these volunteer's are swamped.

I would bet when they explain safe computer practices should be followed to the person their helping , that person will be downloading mega gig's of porn a half hour later and only after downloading and saving will they realize their firewall was disabled the whole time lol.

 

Yup get a good antivirus, also get a adblock, and ghostery plugin works good to along with malwarebytes anti exploit, which is also free, you will keep most of the nasty out of the computer, i went to a porn site one time got lucky did not get anything because i had all the adds block, and along with anti exploit and ghostery i was good.

 

I totally agree. Adblockers and some zero day exploits protection are a must have nowadays. Too bad AV utils just give a false security feeling.

 

I pretty much just use Windows for games, I sometimes come here, but my other SSD has Linux on it

 

If the user is not familiar with safe surfing habits and has no interest in learning them it's really a lost cause imo. You could have the best security on your computer but if you go to websites that are known malware haunts you will get infected at some point.

When malware removal helpers try to explain to people that certain sites should be avoided it would be nice if the infected users would listen and take it seriously.

I think some do but a lot don't as well and just think "well if i get infected again they will take care of it " , not fair imo.

 

Thats the right thing to do lol.

 

Avoiding websites based in third world countries is a start.