Can viruses and spyware on your computer...?

Question

Can viruses and spyware attach stuff to your computer that you truly didn't view yourself? (porn) My husband had this laptop and then we gave it to my middle son. We had a problem with our anti virus program and went a time w/o any. The computer died and a family friend attempted to clean it out for us, then informed my older son that it had been used to look at porn. My older son says that he can tell it was viewed and or attached by some form or use of limewire. My middle son does use limewire, but is adimant that he has not viewed porn. So, is it possible that viruses and spyware, which we knew it had, can attach crap to your computer? My middle son is totally embarrassed this family friend may think he is a perv!

Answer 1

Short answer? Oh yes! Definetely! Viruses/malware are just "malicious code" i.e. They do anything they're programmed to do. Steal your personal information, act as a "gateway" for hosting files such as pornography & other files (indecent or not). Have your family viewed this stuff? Maybe! But it's not for me to judge. Can viruses do this sort of thing? Without a shadow of a doubt. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Things like this do not just make their way onto your computer for no reason. There are numerous ways that a virus can get into your computer.

1) Your son may have clicked on a popup window. Popups are used to trigger spyware alot and popups from inappropriate sites can leave your computer with a nasty virus. Even some popups will damage your computer when you click the X to close it! The safest way to close popups is using ALT+CTRL+F4. This closes a popup without ever touching it with your mouse cursor.

2) Your son could be lying. If your family friend cleaned it out and saw that porn was viewed, then it probably was. You should open up the cookies and history folders on the laptop and check the dates/times that the porn sites were visited. This will let you know who looked at the porn, what they looked at and when they did it. You can't get a better answer any other way.

3)There are many P2P programs other than Limewire. Your son could have installed or attempted to install one, got the virus, and deleted the program immediately. This gets rid of the program, but not the virus. There are numerous sites which host downloads for P2P programs and Torrent Downloaders. Alot of times the files on these sites are malicious to your computer and cause virus problems.

To be safer in the future, you should make sure that Windows Firewall is turned on. Its not a crazy Firewall, but it does its job well enough. Thsi will help prevent malicious contacts with your computer. You should also have a virus protection software installed such as McAfree. You should also have Lavasoft AdAware SE Personal and Spybot Search and Destroy installed on the computer and run regularly to avoid spyware and bots from running within your computer.

Without actually looking at dates of things installed on the computer or dates/times that websites are looked at, there is no way to pin this on your son. Its a good thing you had a family friend who quickly took care of the problem. Just a word of wisdom: Be careful who you lend expensive things to.

Answer 3

It's possible to add files etc. but I believe that this is probably not the case. Most likely someone probably viewed some porn sites themselves and are too embarrassed to come forward. Your best to tell everyone that all porn sites will have virus, adware, spyware and trojans and that someone using the computer was to blame. I wouldn't go overboard about finding the specific person, I'm sure they have learned their lesson.
Stress to them to avoid these sites and any sites that are not secured. Limewire is also filled with these problems, be careful what you download.

Answer 4

Spyware can show popups and whatnot of porn sites. If they were indeed downloaded from LimeWire, that has to be done manually.