I have been in the PC business here in the Southport area since 2000, and have been writing this column almost all of that time. As faithful readers know, my main charter is PCs and electronics, but at times I do speak out often on pertinent local issues. Perhaps I spoke too well; at the urging of many friends and readers I have filed for the Oak Island Town Council election. As such I will have to curtail discussing local issues to some degree in the future.
I wanted to finish up the iPhone discussion this week, but again another important topic got in the way.
PCs around the area are being hijacked. Ransomed. Blackmailed. I have seen enough of this now to see a trend, and it's not good. What is going on is the age-old battle between the forces of good and evil. Only in this case it's not Harry Potter or Hogwarts - the battleground is your PC. What is going on is that the bad guys have ratcheted things up a notch, and the good guys are a little late in responding. The external symptoms are that you get taskbar balloon which informs you that your PC has a severe virus or spyware infestation. Your web browser may only go to their website, or you may be bombarded with popup windows. You are directed to a website which purports to have a tool to eliminate all that stuff and clean up your PC, but your PC has been hijacked and you have to pay the ransom.
What is new is that the techniques the bad guys use to install and hide their software have become much more difficult to spot and eliminate. The standard tools such as Norton Internet Security are having difficulty finding and eradicating this stuff. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was confident that having Norton on my client's PCs was sufficient - but not now. Not to worry too much - the good guys will eventually catch up, but for now you have to mind your (PC) manners.
Much of this junk is coming in emails, especially the spam that everybody gets these days telling you that you have a greeting card from a friend or admirer. Don't open these up! This is, of course, going to kill the legitimate online greeting card industry but that is an unfortunate fallout of this situation. And if by chance you do open the email, especially don't click on the link inside to actually read the card - therein lies doom.
The bad spyware is also coming into your PC in freebee program downloads and also in what appears to be ancillary files associated with other programs. For example, you try to play some music from a website and a popup informs you that you don't have the correct codec (software needed to play a particular music format) and you should click here to download it. Do it and you are compromised.
So the first thing to do is practice safe computing - just carry it even further. Do not open emails if suspicious, and especially don't click on links within emails. If you do need to go to one of these links, type it manually into your web browser. Beware of downloading freebee programs, and especially beware of downloading "extra" stuff if a webpage asks you to. I wish there were some better or more specific guidelines on this stuff but it's difficult as the bad guys change their methods almost every week, it seems.
If you get one of these nastys, the first rule is: Don't Panic! Even if this is a new threat, the good guys will catch up eventually. Make sure your internet security program is up to date, and run a full system scan. If that does not solve the problem, download and run one of the anti-spyware programs such as Spybot or Adaware - both of which have free versions.
If that doesn't do it, you can Google the name of the nasty and see what activity is going on. Often you can find specialized programs that people have written to eradicate the spyware, but who can you trust? All you can do in this case is read the experiences of other people and try to determine what tools have helped them.
Or, live with the popups for a few days or weeks until the good guys catch up.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)