Strands #248 “Strumming Right...
Quizzes & Puzzles22 mins ago
Have just found out my laptop's got a virus called Trojan Elite.bar. I have Norton Anti virus on it but (entirely my own fault) it wasn't up to date and this virus slipped through. Luckily I have someone who can sort it out for me but was wondering why someone would target little old me? Thought these virus inventors went for big companies. Does anyone know about this virus and what effect a virus has on your personal computer as in do the sender have access to my stuff?
How can I avoid getting another one in the future?
No best answer has yet been selected by happy_face. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.This is a piece of adware rather than a trojan or a virus so in this case you're probably safe from having your machine compromised - providing this is all that is on your machine.
See here for further details.
http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=133782
We used to think of virus writers as pimply faced geeks who couldn't get a date but they grew up got dates, married and got mortgages.
Now many of these viruses/trojans/adware packages are aimed at paying for those mortgages. If you can get enough machines hitting pages at 0.1p per click you can earn a lot of money. If you can infect enough machines you can build an army of drone machines that can be rented out to "hit" web sites ( I think $100 per hour is a typical rate)
To keep this trash off of your machine you need to get a reputable antivirus product and personal firewall (and that probably means paying for one) and most importantly keeping in up to date at least once a week.
You also need yo make sure that you have the most up to date patches from microsoft (I'm assuming you're a windows user) visit www.windowsupdate.com
If you have the following in place and you use common sense you will never get a virus or popups / ads.
1. Put your internet connection behind a router
2. Make sure port forwarding is not set up on the router.
3. Make sure NAT (Network Address Transalation) is enabled on the router
4. If Windows XP, Upgrade to Service Pack 2 and enable the firewall
5. If other Windows eg 2000 / ME / 98SE Install a program called ZoneAlarm www.zonealarm.com A home use version is free, But I recommend you buy the full version which will stop popups and advertisements.
6. Install Anti-Virus Software, AVG from Grisoft for home use is free and its OK, But I recommend Symantec/Norton Antivirus 2005 but you will have to buy this.
7. Never have or allow any extra toolbars on your browser, they may say they are 'helpers' or 'Searchers', trust me they are not.
8. Never download programs (eg weather progs, shopping helpers etc) that sit in your system task bar, If you do get rid of them.
9. Ask your service provider to identify SPAM and delete viruses before they get to you, All service providers can do this, If the say they cant, change service provider.
10. If you dont know what it is, dont open it, dont download it !
11. Put rules in your Email Client, ie tell it to look for certain things and move them to a 'safety' folder
If you follow the recommendations you will NOT have any problems.
If any of you tech heads can point out anything I have missed please point them out, cheers.