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Internet and Tech Woes: Victim of Virus and Spam IT epedemic

So I log onto my blog and there is some 84 comments to moderate from the last week. I’m thinking, ‘Damn! My blog is happenin!’ To my dismay, 80 of the comments were spam. As usual, most of the spam could be spotted a mile away�the systematically generated posts with 20 url-hyperlinks to pharmaceuticals and sexual aphrodisiacs promo sites–while others required more than two seconds to be certain of their invalidity, i.e. the ones hoping to get away with one free track back url hiding behind general comments like ‘I really agree with everything in {blog title}, Good Wednesday’ Perhaps I might have been fooled had such a generalization been posted sparingly, but not on 10 different posts!

Need I even talk about email spam. Yahoo mail has only gotten better over the years. I�ve upgraded to the new Yahoo format�for free of course�and their spam detection seems to have gotten up to date, separating most of the spam into a draft folder which I seldomly open. Though, there have been a few occasions that legit mail has ended up in that folder, so I do recommend people give a quick browse to the Bulk or Spam folder before emptying it.

If only the blog and email spam were the end of my internet-tech woes.

For the last several months, my computer has been virtually unprotected from virus and spy protection. When I first bought the thing (I�m still amazed that this mobile 1.3 ghz processor Compaq budget notebook has outlasted it�s one year warranty by more than a year an half and counting�knock on wood) back in early 2005, I had changed from the trial Norton Anti Virus to what I thought was a lifetime free program, Mcafee, which lasted for about a year of constant updates and cleans, before suddenly expiring and asking for a paid renewal.

It was no surprise that soon after not renewing updates, viruses, Trojans, and malaware made their invasion on my system (which initially seemed to thrive via Internet Explorer). Eventually, Microsoft Internet Explorer and MSN/Windows messenger started to have problems, and so I finally decided download and try out Mozilla Firefox for my web browsing�I had heard and read only good things about it and must say that I was converted on my first try.

Not only was I bored of all the crashes and spyware threats via IE, but Mozilla Firefox�s tab function-system offered a perfect solution for extensive web research-surf organization; With IE, research and surfing trough some 20 plus sites requires one to have 20 separate windows open, which in effect clutters the task bar, lacking any organization (easy to forget which site was where in the long list of open windows). On top of that, in the case of a crash (which seemed to be quite often), IE offered no back up or guarantee to remember each site. With Firefox, sessions are saved, so in the event of a crash (which hasn�t happened yet) or if all windows are closed unexpectedly, sessions are saved and one is asked if they want to restore their last session next time they open the web browswer.

Another great advantage of Firefox, is it seems to be consistent and secure in that when I tell it to not allow pop ups and cookies, it follows my orders, and so I don�t get random pop ups of junk sites, spam, and spyware advertisements. So how about my virus problem? There is no doubt, I�m infected with hundreds of Trojans and malaware on daily basis.

I finally decided to give in to the AVG free anti-virus service hype (though I am not so na�ve to believe anything is free) that claims to be free forever for personal use. My latest virus problem is my Windows Date & Time has be fixed and tampered to display two years earlier (2005 instead of 2007), with no yet luck of setting it right. From reading several forums, the yet unidentified/unhealed virus that has caused this can likely have easier access / control over certain systems that can not function normally with an out of sync time and date.

Well, the only drawback directly affected is I can not sign into MSN messenger, which is actually a good thing considering the hefty task load I have on my plate this month and beyond. In the meantime, AVG is still finding dozens of Trojans on my computer daily, and I�m yet to wonder how many of its findings were initiated by the same or connected business entity???

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One Response to “Internet and Tech Woes: Victim of Virus and Spam IT epedemic”

  1. Jao Moragoat Says:
    December 12th, 2007 at 5:18 pm

    So after half a dozen virus scans via AVG, the time and date issue seemed to vanish after doing a scan and changing the year to normal–believe it was crucial to have scanned in safe mode atleast twice in between automatic updates..

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