[Scourge of Ages]

Vista Scan '12 (or something): Hello Scourge, I have troubling news. It seems you have many viruses. Do not worry, I will eliminate them for you 
Me: Is that so. Funny, I don't recall hiring anybody by your name. Let's ask MSE if he's seen anything suspicious.
VS12: I'm sorry Dave Scourge, MSE is no longer available. I took the liberty of relieving him of his duties.
Me: Oh, I see then. Perhaps you'd like to speak to my other friend, Task Manager!
VS12: So it's going to be like that then. *dies quietly*
Me: OK, now to restart MSE, do a virus scan, run Firefox and do a little research on how to kill this thing...
VS12: HAHAHAHA! You didn't think you could kill me that easily, did you?! MSE, denied! FF, denied! HA!
Me: Hmmm. *kills processes again, calls my brother from the other room, who does tech support*
Sometime later, Malwarebytes: OK, everything's taken care of, your computer is running smooth and clean again. You take care now.

The moral of the story: Scan your PCs regularly!
Good night!

[rev_posix]

The other morals of this story:

Quick punching the monkey, you are not going to win a free xbox! 

[Mongoose]

Man I loathe those things.  I think they're a Java exploit, so your usual anti-malware stuff doesn't pick them up before they crap all over your system.  I've found System Restore to be fairly effective against them.

[JCDNWarrior]

I guess it explains why people almost hyperventilate when their anti-virus subscription runs out and need a new subscription from us. As a computer tech i'm like 'I haven't been using anti-virus programs for years, what's the big deal' but when they keep punching the monkey, hitting the soccer ball to score or whatever crap they get lured into, no wonder.

Also, using NoScript with Firefox and Adblocker (not sure of exact name right now) is a good combination to not even load the java things, speeding up internet  browsing as well.

[deathfun]

I've dealt with that type of virus three times. It's always fun
I've also dealt with this one where it disguised itself as Svchost.exe. That was a true pain to get rid of

[S-99]

There's blocking java script with web browser add ons (these addons i mention just give you a little on off button (which is very convenient) for javascript so you don't have to go into preferences of your web browser every time). That's only really handy if you're on a slow connection. Too many web site functions around the world use javascript very often so i don't bother with blocking it anymore since it was more of a hinderance.

Other than that people in here will probably know what i'm going to say next.

[NGTM-1R]

It always makes me curious where you people go/what you do that causes you to pick these things up.

[karajorma]

somethingpornsomething.com

[Hellstryker]

I guess it explains why people almost hyperventilate when their anti-virus subscription runs out and need a new subscription from us. As a computer tech i'm like 'I haven't been using anti-virus programs for years, what's the big deal' but when they keep punching the monkey, hitting the soccer ball to score or whatever crap they get lured into, no wonder.

Also, using NoScript with Firefox and Adblocker (not sure of exact name right now) is a good combination to not even load the java things, speeding up internet  browsing as well.

System restore, safemode, and nuking the stuff manually with fileassassin after locating the files/registry entries with hijack this. Of course, that was a year or so ago for me, so if Malwarebytes works against it now, awesome.

[Delta_V]

It always makes me curious where you people go/what you do that causes you to pick these things up.

I've gotten the same thing as Scourge has a couple of times, except it was the Win 7 Antivirus version.  One time, I was on ESPN, and the other time, all that was open was a frickin' Adobe Flash Player update.  Some of these things don't require you to click on anything to get infected.  Microsoft Security Essentials didn't catch it either time, but System Restore followed by a full system scan took care of it nicely.

[Nuke]

I guess it explains why people almost hyperventilate when their anti-virus subscription runs out and need a new subscription from us. As a computer tech i'm like 'I haven't been using anti-virus programs for years, what's the big deal' but when they keep punching the monkey, hitting the soccer ball to score or whatever crap they get lured into, no wonder.

Also, using NoScript with Firefox and Adblocker (not sure of exact name right now) is a good combination to not even load the java things, speeding up internet  browsing as well.

when i worked for an oem i got rather sick of computers coming back with viruses. our policy was that the first repair was free, and subsequent repairs were paid on an hourly bases. this policy was costing me a lot of build time, to re-instal windows for people. after several of such repairs i found out that norton was kind of like a timebomb, people would just ignore the fact that their trial subscription had ended, and the viruses would pewn them. after that i convinced my boss to remove norton from the demo kit, and instead we just put an avg installer on the desktop and renamed it something like "Protect your system with AVG", we couldn't actually install it for legal reasons, but putting the installer on their desktop was ok. after that very few machines came back with virus issues. it saved the company a ****load of money and i got a raise out of it.

[NGTM-1R]

Some of these things don't require you to click on anything to get infected.

They still require you to come in contact with them somehow. I never seem to.

[Delta_V]

They still require you to come in contact with them somehow. I never seem to.

I must just be really unlucky like that.  I mean, I caught it once from a normal website and once when I didn't even have a browser open (I honestly didn't think that was possible until it happened to me).

[deathfun]

It always makes me curious where you people go/what you do that causes you to pick these things up.

Fallout Wikipedia, Hotmail (I didn't open any email either)... no idea for the other one

In fact, not one porn site I've frequented has given me any malicious thing. None! But no, the time I go on Wikipedia, all hell breaks loose

[Scourge of Ages]

I guess that's the third moral: Even if you try to be safe, and watch where you click, and don't go anywhere dodgy, this sort of thing can still happen. So be prepared to deal with it I guess?

[jr2]

I guess it explains why people almost hyperventilate when their anti-virus subscription runs out and need a new subscription from us. As a computer tech i'm like 'I haven't been using anti-virus programs for years, what's the big deal' but when they keep punching the monkey, hitting the soccer ball to score or whatever crap they get lured into, no wonder.

Also, using NoScript with Firefox and Adblocker (not sure of exact name right now) is a good combination to not even load the java things, speeding up internet  browsing as well.

AdBlock or AdBlock+, they have AB, AB+, and NoScript for Chrome as well.  Also, try getting PeerBlock (not PeerGuardian, that's outdated and PB was designed from the old PG), and updating the lists to include malware and ad sites, etc.

MalwareBytes is FTW

If you want to try something out but don't know what it is, use Sandboxie to run it; if it does something nasty, just delete the sandbox (also can use this to install programs that you don't want starting all the time with your system, just want to use them once in a while).

EDIT: You could also try changing your DNS settings to Google DNS or OpenDNS, but that's a little advanced...

Reason:  Well, you see, I was once at this hotel doing some repair work for the guy who owned it, as he had a virus.  Even after restoring his system to factory, he kept getting redirects.  What happened?  Well, you see, his free wi-fi was just a standard router, which he never bothered changing the default passwords to.  And his DNS in the router had been set to a DNS server somewhere in Russia. (No joke, I looked it up!)  So, I reset his Router, put a good password in, and everything was all set from there.  What I wonder is how many of his clients had gotten viruses while staying at his hotel using his wifi (and having their requests to go to certain legit sites re-routed to virus sites, and their virus scanners and windows update requests blocked).

You can fix all of this by having your DNS set to use Google or OpenDNS and not get the DNS from the router or modem.  HOWEVER, some free wifi setups and ISPs require that you use their DNS servers to function on the Internet.  So use with caution, and don't forget that you have this set!

[KyadCK]

I guess it explains why people almost hyperventilate when their anti-virus subscription runs out and need a new subscription from us. As a computer tech i'm like 'I haven't been using anti-virus programs for years, what's the big deal' but when they keep punching the monkey, hitting the soccer ball to score or whatever crap they get lured into, no wonder.

Also, using NoScript with Firefox and Adblocker (not sure of exact name right now) is a good combination to not even load the java things, speeding up internet  browsing as well.

when i worked for an oem i got rather sick of computers coming back with viruses. our policy was that the first repair was free, and subsequent repairs were paid on an hourly bases. this policy was costing me a lot of build time, to re-instal windows for people. after several of such repairs i found out that norton was kind of like a timebomb, people would just ignore the fact that their trial subscription had ended, and the viruses would pewn them. after that i convinced my boss to remove norton from the demo kit, and instead we just put an avg installer on the desktop and renamed it something like "Protect your system with AVG", we couldn't actually install it for legal reasons, but putting the installer on their desktop was ok. after that very few machines came back with virus issues. it saved the company a ****load of money and i got a raise out of it.

Oh man... pre-loaded trial anti-virus... the nightmares

I do have one worse though: Comp comes with Nortan free, sales person sells customer McAfee, customer does not uninstall Nortan. Not only do McAfee and Nortan go for each others throats, when Nortan does finally go belly up (trial ends) it drags the system down with it. Makes even the best of computers beg for mercy.

[Nuke]

we would just restore to factory settings, if they wanted backup that would cost extra.

[JCDNWarrior]

<snip>

when i worked for an oem i got rather sick of computers coming back with viruses. our policy was that the first repair was free, and subsequent repairs were paid on an hourly bases. this policy was costing me a lot of build time, to re-instal windows for people. after several of such repairs i found out that norton was kind of like a timebomb, people would just ignore the fact that their trial subscription had ended, and the viruses would pewn them. after that i convinced my boss to remove norton from the demo kit, and instead we just put an avg installer on the desktop and renamed it something like "Protect your system with AVG", we couldn't actually install it for legal reasons, but putting the installer on their desktop was ok. after that very few machines came back with virus issues. it saved the company a ****load of money and i got a raise out of it.

Oh man... pre-loaded trial anti-virus... the nightmares

I do have one worse though: Comp comes with Nortan free, sales person sells customer McAfee, customer does not uninstall Nortan. Not only do McAfee and Nortan go for each others throats, when Nortan does finally go belly up (trial ends) it drags the system down with it. Makes even the best of computers beg for mercy.

Now that, that is the biggest and most common problem I have to deal with in my job almost every.single.day when it comes to questions about anti-virus software. "Hey I installed McAfee yet it won't work" "screenshot?" *customer posts screenshot showing Norton and McAfee fighting over domination* "Okay, well, remove all trial versions like Norton or it won't work".

Of course the whole conversation spans out over several days, while you're dealing with people who are scared about doing -anything- on a computer without anti-virus protection, occasionally causing them to spam your e-mail inbox.