Got my computer ballsed up yesterday with a Trojan — kept bouncing me off to a website selling antivirus software… gah.
Spam mail is one thing, I can understand how people might be tempted to buy something. Particularly if they have’re having a problem getting an erection.
Likewise the “Dear Sir, I’m a Banker in Nairobi with 400,000,000 dollars for you” scams. I can understand how someone might be taken in. Hoodwinked. Conned. Taken for a ride. Most people are happy to get silly and dirty for money… if not, Fear Factor wouldn’t have been such a hit.
Nice, by the way, how they give you the US$400,000,000 number and then write it out longhand. Neat.
And I certainly like being “esteemed” several times in the morning before emptying my trash.
But who on earth is going to buy an antivirus program from a company that gives you a virus/trojan to take your browser automatically to their website?
Somebody will, I know.
So, I got my computer ballsed up with this trojan thingie and spent a good couple of hours searching for fixes and so on to remove it. Not easy but eventually done.
And while I was trolling through the forums for info and advice, it struck me how many people are wading through the same crap. There’s a lot of unhappy puppies out there with viruses (virii?) and trojans.
Then I see in today’s news on PC Magazine that “Symantec’s New Norton Products Hit the Streets”.
Firstly, I don’t like the headline. There’s nothing streetwise or dynamic about Norton. Since day one, they’ve turned every half-decent computer I’ve had into a slow, sludgy mire.
They never hit the streets. They strolled. Hands in their pockets. Damn, they probably whistled.
Second or third paragraph of the article talks about “drive-by downloads”.
What the hell is that?
A drive by download? What will have next? Pimps & Hookers? Maybe they should rename “Phishing Scams” to Pimps & Hookers. Seems appropriate. Phishing was a stupid name anyway.
Back to Norton… I wonder how these guys are still around?
Back in the day (I’m not sure but it might have be a Tuesday), hacks and suchlike were fairly rare.
On the few occasions I was hacked, I worried I’d lose everything… data, video card, hard drive, my identity… never happened of course but on those few occasions, I did use Norton… it almost never got the job done. In fact, the few times I’ve used it, it always slowed my computer down more than the damn virus. Norton is a virus. A big, buggy, crappy virus.
Has anything changed?
I don’t think so.
A question: why are Microsoft Users (I’m one) still dealing with 3rd Party vendors for antivirus?
I can understand why they went for the browser market and put out a free browser… kind of. Well, not really.
I can understand going for the media player market and putting out a media player… that’s free. Yeah. Well, not really.
And all the other stuff they do.
But wouldn’t it make more sense to corner the international antivirus market? I mean, isn’t security the whole point behind Vista?
Strange.
In other news, “Microsoft Unleashes Vista Service Pack Details”… unleashed? Who writes this crap?
One other turn of phrase in the same article that made me grimace: the service pack “will be available in three forms: express, stand-alone, and slipstream”… SLIPSTREAM?
I guess, like most people, I don’t want to think about viruses or trojans or drive-by downloads, hijacks, hoaxes, scams, phishers, pimps or hookers. I want to switch on my computer, do my work, turn it off and go home. Maybe play a game from time to time. Or browse the net.
I don’t want to think about them, talk about them or marvel at the funky new names some pudwhacking spin doctor has come up with in order to try and make the subject sound even a little more interesting than drying paint.
I don’t want anything unleashed and I’m certainly not looking for anything or anyone to hit the streets. Not on my behalf.
And, as for Norton, here we are entering the era of the US$100.00 (one hundred dollars) laptop and these yoyos and bozos are charging US$90 (ninety dollars) for virus protection.
Good grief.
Sean