Virus alert peeps using photobucket

[Live to ride Ride to live]

Look out for weird behavior using photobucket, Ive just hada a bloodhound virus come through, I blocked it, maany of you may not get to it after its in your files.

Make sure your antivirus is upto date.

The noobinator

P

[R1evad]

Was just coming on to say the same, NORTON flagged it up.

Thanks LTR

[Gas up - Let's Go!]

For those of you without visrus protection you can still afford yourself a little protection, If you use Win2K, XP or Vista you should only login as a basic user, leave the supervisor user for time when you need to install programs etc.

When you setup you basic user, give them as few rights as you can work with - in most cases the Virus is using your rights to do it's damage. So no rights = less potential for damage.

better still - go buy a copy of Internet Security, for the £50 or so quid it'll cost you. you'll get a years pice of mind. If you're a UK user with BT you get it free, not sure about other ISP's

[ShoKz]

i dont have virus protection on 2 of my pc's

Mac dont need it

[Gas up - Let's Go!]

i dont have virus protection on 2 of my pc's

Mac dont need it

Don't be too sure - Virus's are only prolific in the windows environment becuase there are so many of them and lets face it, windows has crap security. As the Mac Population grows so will the security threat. I can remember seeing Mac viruses 15 years ago on System 7, it's only the almost extinction of the Mac in the years since that has afforded it some protection. Now they are making a comeback - take your data seriously!

A virus is just an automated hack, that's all - it's just the payload that seperates them.

Another tip - don't rely on a single product type to protect you, Virus protection is always out-of-date, think about a statefull firewall and put things like you address, bank sequence number etc in it, that way if something is trying to extract financial information you don't need to rely on just the virus protection to pick it up - this works for any important information you have. There are products that include multiple levels of protection in a single box

Backups are important when did you last do a full one? Again there are products (from Freeware to $$$$) that will kick these off automaticaly - I purchased a USB 500Gb drive and do an automated backup every night, overnight, think it cost about £50.

Sorry - I sound like a right nerd I'm off to ride my bike some more........

[ReBorne]

I work on a Home IT helpdesk, dealing with Joe Public and his computer woes.

I *personally* wouldn't use Norton if I was paid. IMO, drags your system resources too much. Ditto McAfee. Get to a free software site (filehippo?) and get AVG or Avast. If you've got money to spend, I trialled Kaspersky a few months back and liked it. At the very, very least get a firewall installed. ZoneAlarm is still a favourite among my colleagues.

(Don't think that because programs are free that they're useless - they let personal users use them for free and charge business users, thus still making a profit.)

The advice above about not using admin login is sound if you're not too gen'd up on computers, so consider it. Ditto the backups. In fact, if you remember NOTHING else from this thread, if you have music/documents and/or pictures, take time out TODAY and do a backup of them. Seriously. Don't think it can't or won't happen to you, do it JUST IN CASE. If you could clone your bike for free in case it got nicked, you would, right? Do the same with your data.

Trouble is today, viruses to kill someone's machine don't do anything but damage, the kids that write them get no real return. The money is in control (you've heard of botnets) and in getting information from your machine - and when money is involved, things get serious. So yes, it can happen to you.

Don't forget your Anti-Spyware. Use 2 different programs, one will always catch some that the other doesn't. Our guys regularly spend 1-2 hours cleaning someone's machine for the sake of 15 minutes getting some protection on there. Jeez, going on the net is like going into a brothel where ALL of the girls have different maladies. You'd think about protection then, wouldn't you..........? (Speaking of spyware, if you've got 2 minutes do a search for Phorm and find out about how ISP's are trying to justify watching your every move on the net, purely in the name of better advertising..... that 2 minutes will turn into a very angry hour.....lol)

And lastly, I'm not gonna start a fanboi war or flame war or anything, but while viruses aren't as prevalent out there for Mac's or Linux, you're not invulnerable. If anyone caught the news of the hacker challenge a couple of months back, 3 machines - Windows, Mac and Linux. Mac went down first, then Linux, then Windows....... it gave a lot of hackers ideas of where to focus their attentions........ so no, you probably won't get hit by a virus. But that doesn't mean you're safe. Windows may get attacked more, but it also has a hell of a lot more people working to fend off those attacks and a lot more profitability due to the sheer volume of users.

OK, too much blethering.

*The comments here are purely my own opinion and in no way reflect the position of my employers or their agents.*

[Gas up - Let's Go!]

I work on a Home IT helpdesk,

Oh no, two geeks!

So if another one comes along, will the forum implode and disappear into it's own binary to hexidecimal conversion?

I hope we don't work for the same large company....... I'll bow to your front line work though as I'm in comms where we deal with virus/malicious attacks slightly differently, and at HUGE cost

[Live to ride Ride to live]

Oh no, two geeks!

So if another one comes along, will the forum implode and disappear into it's own binary to hexidecimal conversion?

I hope we don't work for the same large company....... I'll bow to your front line work though as I'm in comms where we deal with virus/malicious attacks slightly differently, and at HUGE cost

Boom!!!!

Well theres probably more than 2 geeks on here. In my spare time I build/repair/upgrade and install PCs....over 50% of the peoples PCs that I deal with are virus related issues....1PC I recently fixed had over 700 virus`s, I was amazed that it still just about worked, the owner explained it had been plugged into the internet twice a day for the last 3 years....with no antivirus.....ARGHHHH....

[SRJ999]

Interesting comments there, guys (I'll get me anorak). I'd have to agree with the "don't buy Antivirus software when free is available" comment, too. I used AVG for a while but have Avast installed now. Additionally, I use ZoneAlarm as my firewall (also free). The only issue I have with Avast and ZA are the length of time it takes to get up and running once I've connected to the Internerd. Avast checks/installs updates every time I connect, which can be a royal pain. Zone Alarm updates monthly, I think.

My old man wanted to buy Norton AV/Firewall, as he assumed it would be better than the freebie AVG I installed for him. I told him not to waste his money and that, even if he bought a pristine "new" copy, it would still want to connect and update, just like AVG. Needless to say, he taught me to be a good skinflint through his own prowess, so he still uses AVG.....

I've not backed my PC up for a while and will do so at the weekend while t'other 'alf is at work. The one thing I worry about losing is the plethora of emails I have. Whilst this presumably is NOT supposed to be a geek site, I'd like to ask a two-part question: I recently bought a new PC, which I'm not yet using because of my fear of losing stuff. f I was to unistall MS Office, c/w Outlook, would I lose those emails, or can I copy them and move them to another PC? If so, where the hell are they, i.e. what filename/filename extension am I looking for and where is it?

I realise this should be in the help section and probably not in a Yamaha Owners' Club forum. Still, someone else started it, sir.

[Cy Welch]

Interesting comments there, guys (I'll get me anorak). I'd have to agree with the "don't buy Antivirus software when free is available" comment, too. I used AVG for a while but have Avast installed now. Additionally, I use ZoneAlarm as my firewall (also free). The only issue I have with Avast and ZA are the length of time it takes to get up and running once I've connected to the Internerd. Avast checks/installs updates every time I connect, which can be a royal pain. Zone Alarm updates monthly, I think.

My old man wanted to buy Norton AV/Firewall, as he assumed it would be better than the freebie AVG I installed for him. I told him not to waste his money and that, even if he bought a pristine "new" copy, it would still want to connect and update, just like AVG. Needless to say, he taught me to be a good skinflint through his own prowess, so he still uses AVG.....

I've not backed my PC up for a while and will do so at the weekend while t'other 'alf is at work. The one thing I worry about losing is the plethora of emails I have. Whilst this presumably is NOT supposed to be a geek site, I'd like to ask a two-part question: I recently bought a new PC, which I'm not yet using because of my fear of losing stuff. f I was to unistall MS Office, c/w Outlook, would I lose those emails, or can I copy them and move them to another PC? If so, where the hell are they, i.e. what filename/filename extension am I looking for and where is it?

I realise this should be in the help section and probably not in a Yamaha Owners' Club forum. Still, someone else started it, sir.

For a firewall you might consider Comodo as IMNSHO it's better than zone alarm and free also. I find that at least for me it takes up less system resources and still works as well.

For outlook, check where your personal folders are stored. It will be a PST file usually in your user folders. Just copy that to the new machine and you have all your stuff. Outlook express I think you MIGHT be out of luck with although what I did was create some folders in my hotmail account and copied all my stuff to hotmail and then it was there on my new computer. Just copied them back to local folders and everything was good.