Oh no! What happened?

Yesterday morning, I downloaded a codec to watch a video. Within seconds, I was being led to this site, virus isolator, that scanned my system online and it claimed to detect several items that needed to be cleaned, and offered me a download link for a “cleaner”. I downloaded. The site LOOKS LEGIT. It is designed to look like the new Windows Vista kinda (if you dare, it’s virus-isolator.com). If you download it, it gets into your Registry, turns off your ability to ctrl+alt+delete into your task manager or run your task manager at all. It puts itself into your taskbar and pops up continual warning messages that you are at high risk. It sends you back to the page to pay for the full download to clean your system. You can’t uninstall the thing without another legitimate program (Spy Hunter 3 Security Suite – because Trend Micro didn’t detect or clean it) – it even takes your wallpaper and replaces it with a big screen of death. It is bad, bad, bad.

If you reboot, you risk losing everything. If you don’t have an external hard drive to backup, you might be totally out of luck. If you do a system restore, it doesn’t detect any changes to the system.

It’s not nice. Not nice at all. Not a good way to spend a day, either.

:no:

oooh I’m so sorry that happened to you. I’m always pretty leary of those places.

I talked to the guy at office depot the other day about my comptuer being retarded and he thinks it’s my Norton anti-virus…he suggested that I delete it and down load this free stuff form the net…. UMMMM I DON”T THINK SO! :rolleyes:

I hate when things like that happen. I’ve been having a lot of ‘situations’ to deal with regarding spyware and viruses. (I’m using someone else’s pc and I think the stuff came with it.) One time I got this message: “Something really bad has happened to your pc.” I laughed so hard I peed my pants. This is not how a programmer would write a warning message. Needless to say, my pc got a “treatment” right away. So sorry you have to deal with stuff like this…especially since you do so much work online.

Ouch! Not fun, not fun at all.

Come look at the picture I just posted. I thought of you…