I am a nobody to the computer world, why would someone want to send my computer melicious software?

Question

My brand new computer I waited over ten years to get got a bug yesterday, computer was froze in a sense, the phone technician at dell went through step by step to rectify the problem, we restored it to an earlier date, and microsoft melicious software remover kicked in, it is now working fine but I am very nervous to look up anything now, and download anything!

Answer 1

the mafia wants your computer, not to steal it from you, but steal its time and internet connection, thats why.
huh? you say.
ok, there are criminal organizations that charge "protection fees" to some commercial web sites, particularly gambling sites.. one way to attack a web site is to get thousands of computers to log onto it all at once, many times each (called a ditributed denial of service attack), it works by either overloading the web site so it crashes or make it very slow to respond to legitimate customers.
the more computers that the mafia can control, the harder they can hit a site that dosent pay up.

what can you do about it
1 be carefull, think very hard "do I trust them" when you are deciding to download something
2 protect yourself, firewall(s), antivirus, anti adware
3 keep up to date, regularly update your system for the latest protections.

you waited 10 years for a new computer?, your first?
hi ya and welcome.
one thing that will really help is a friend who knows, a neighbour, colleague or geek at a computer shop. they will be able to help

Answer 2

Welcome to the wonderful world of computers!!
Now that you have had your first virus/spyware you a member of the PC family!!

What you need to do is make sure you have a virus scanner running on your PC. Most Dells come with Norton installed (good for the first six months), so you are probably covered there. If not, download and install AVG Free Edition from http://free.grisoft.com/softw/70free/setup/avg71free_405a782.exe and it will protect your PC from virsus.

Then make sure you have an anti-spyware program also. Doneload both Ad-aware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/) and Skybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/) and run them about once a week to remove any spyware. Run both as one may caught something the other missing. Also go to microsoft.com and download Defender to protect against future infections.

If you do those, and use common sense about what you download, you should be OK. And if you do get infected and the spyware programs do not clean it, just do like the Dell tech did and do a system restore from a day or two back before the infection.

Good luck!!

Answer 3

malicious software is used just becuase it can be, it tracks what you do and sends it to a remote computer.
Most firewalls and antiviruses automatically decide if your downloading something dangerous then its upto you. do you trust the site you are downloading from? or have you just been told about, or just found the site.
Obviously if you trust the site download the file, but if you can, even after downloading the file run a scan using the anti-virus program and let it see if there is a virus.
And of course if there is a virus just delete the file and you should be fine.

Hope this helps. :-)

Note: Most companies and schools will often install SAFE malicious software which tracks what you are doing and then send it to them. It is a companies way of checking no-one is breaking the rules.
Now that ive told you that, think about what you are doing in a public place, because internet cafe's and many public places put malicious software on the computers and ca then get your passwords!
The lesson here, Think before you use a computer in a public place.

Have a nice Life. ;-)

Answer 4

You just have to be careful when you get emails from everywhere and visit websites. The truth is one of your friends might have sent you a bad email and not known their computer had a virus. Then some viruses you get will get into your address book and send out the virus as something that users might want to read titled something like "READ NOW" so they read it instead of deleting then it downloads to their computer and gets into their address book and does the same. It can be bad. Also websites sometimes have been hacked into and they put a little bit of software in the background which runs when you click a part of the site or when you visit it and it runs the virus. I suggest you get some anti-spyware program and also an anti-virus scanner, they are worth your money since you are very proud of your computer.

Answer 5

well that's the Internet its the bigest resource of information, help, and god knows what else but just about everything in the world. it can also be one of the biggest sources of frustration.
if you are looking to protect your computer now without spending close to $100 on anti virus software than you should start using mozilla its a browser that you can download for free and i like it better than Internet explorer anyway. also if you are using outlook be super carefull its a big hole for viruses and spyware to get into your computer. if you do those two things you wont be untouchable but you'll be a little safer

Answer 6

You will get used to it.
First of all you have to get a bad @ss antivirus to monitor the system all the time in the backgound (like the amazing NOD 32
antivirus from www.eset.com) and a firewall , optionally a router
for max protection and anonimity. Second you have to learn how to make the difference between clean sites and infested shady ones . Sadly Spyware, malware, adware you'll pretty much get anyway somehow, so you need to have a good anti spy prog to clean your pc from time to time.
Internet is jungle.

Answer 7

There are some people out there who are just plain jerks, doing this stuff for the fun of it, and trying to get info on people for identity theft, credit card numbers, and they do it randomly.

You should get an internet security suit such as McAffee or Norton. That will protect your computer from these people. You should also run regular virus scans, spyware scans etc.

Answer 8

My dear, in this world no one is safe. It doesn't matter if you are Queen of England or the poorest person on earth. There are just bad people in the world. Be very selective about what you download and install a virus protection program that continually checks your system, like McAfee or Norton. Don't open emails from people you don't know. Scan everything. Be tough!

Answer 9

Malicious software are sent to all & sundry. Always ensure you have a working software for such things (Norton Internet Security is good). Have pop-up blockers on, Windows Firewall on. With these, you'll be alerted when sites want to gain access to your address books (for spam mail) & sites will be stopped from popping up on your screen. Your downloads will be scanned before you download, etc. For me, there is no such thing as too much protection when it comes to my computer.

Answer 10

Yep, that's the type of world we live in now. Nothing is sacred anymore. I too, am nervous about getting a virus on my computer, so I never open anything I'm not sure about, and I definitely do not open any emails from senders I don't know.