Viruses,Trojans,Sypware,and so on.

January 26th, 2005, 1:08 pm

Ok. I am new to this forum. But not new to computers. I can remember a few years ago. Not even that many ago. When it was safe to surf the net. I new that using firewalls, Virus softeware, and other saftey software was very inportant. But yesterday I got board. Let me start by saying I am posting this with my Lap Top that Has XP on it. The machine I used to do this test is my tower with 98se on it. I turned off all the security software. Well I thought I did all of it was off except the viruses software. I surfed the net like someone new to the computer world and the internet. I went to a lot of different sites. I also went to a lot of the sites in SpyWare Blaster as unsafe site. And unsafe they are. I only hit about 30 different sites. And as many new users would do I said yes to the different things that would pop up and say you needed to down load this software to view there site. That is when AVG would say Viruses ditected. But sence it was a test I ignored it. And keep going on. This happened a lot. SO it was detecting the problems. But as some one with out this protection would not detect these problems. They would have no Idea what was going on. But I also noticed that my machine which is
2.53GHz Celeron D 533 MHz FSB 256KB L2 Cache
256 MB DDR Ram 333MHz
Diamond S60 64MB DDR memory
It was running a lot slower. I then hit Control,Alt,Delet to see what was running. Well there were 20 new items running I didnt put on my machine. Plus the machine locked up seven time and had to reboot. That is when I ended the test. A lot of new users would just keep using it.
But then I scaned my computer with AVG it found over 100 viruses,and Trojans. And a lot were embeded. Then I also ran Spybot it found a lot of spyware too. So to any new users. Beware!!!!!! Use the security software it will protect you. There is a lot of very good software out there and a lot of it is free to use for personal use. So please us it. As it will safe you a lot of problems in the future. Plus dont forget to check for update. As all the security in the world is no good with out the updates.
Now many may ask why I did this. It is because of two reasons and a few others. But the biggest one is to let new computer users know how bad it is. The other is a leaning experence for me and the final is. I plan on putting XP on that machine. Hope this helps someone. As I learned something.

[ATNO/TW]

January 26th, 2005, 1:13 pm

This is excellent advice for new and experienced users Baldeagle. Thanks for sharing it and welcome to OZZU.

January 26th, 2005, 1:55 pm

Almost forgot to mention that there were a lot of other infection that I didnt mention. Like worms and back door programs. Plus other things I have never seen. Really scary. Glad I have the protection on my XP machine. Had it on the 98 too but just had to do this experment.

January 26th, 2005, 3:00 pm

nice. hey, how bout another experiment. surf those same sites without antivirus software or firewalls, etc. using linux and macintosh. see what happens. i dont have a linux or a mac...grr..my dad wont get me a mac....EVEN if he likes macs better than pcs.

January 26th, 2005, 3:18 pm

I would do that if had linux or a mac. Well I have linux but can not get it loaded on my tower machine. Still working on that. As for a Mac. I would try it but I dont plan on buying on to see how it afects it. I am sure that the results would be the same though. But the test did go with out any saftey software on the machine. I shut it all off to do the test. The anti viruses software was not really on. But it still decected them. But I keep ignoring it.