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This is so weird...
Sep. 13th, 2016 06:12 amHi.
Okay so I was clearing off my desktop yesterday...wait, let me back up. I have a virus. Or more likely malware. Or adware. Or some fucking thing that makes weird webpages telling me I have a virus (no shit!) randomly open and play audio when I (maybe?) click on links that use the "target="_blank"" tag to open things in a new window (because Blake said it's recently been exploited). I say this because I don't think all websites use it and some websites appear safe (like clicking stuff from TweetDeck, and I think Patreon was the other one, never triggers the weird webpages, but LiveJournal and Facebook definitely do).
This is my 2nd time having a virus or whatnot, in the past year, and I have no idea how I got it. I haven't downloaded music since I discovered Spotify years ago, I use such ancient e-mail software and have never used virus protection, so I know I'm vulnerable and won't even open an e-mail from a name I don't recognize, to the point where most people know better than to e-mail me because I'll probably never open it unless I recognize your "From" name or the "Subject" line is really obvious. I'm getting as paranoid about e-mail as I am about phone numbers, honestly.
Anyway, I do get a lot of terrible virusy spam because my e-mail address is all over the internet, and like I said, I still use SquirrelMail* and have never used virus protection, and it's feasible I got something that way. Doesn't matter. Whatever this thing is, it doesn't seem to happen in FireFox, just Chrome (I dunno about Edge bc who cares?) but we've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Chrome and that hasn't fixed it, and in my day to day life, I use a LOT of Chrome bookmarks and a LOT of Chrome tabs, so by the end of a day, because of this virus thing, my computer is CRAWLING and literally making me scream.
I now have on my computer:
Kaspersky
AVG
Avast
Ad-Aware
McAfee
Stinger
Malwarebytes
...where no software of the kind has ever existed before, and jus about ALL of them now, are making pop ups of their own, trying to get me to buy them or I won't be protected, when none of them seem to be doing SHIT except deleting a few temp files every day that I'm pretty sure are just torrent-related because my torrents stop seeding. (And I realize a virus or whatnot can come from a torrent, and not that this protects me, but I only download from a supposedly private one that you need someone to invite you to and you have to maintain an upload/download ratio to remain, and no one else on the site is complaining of viruses that I can see, so I think e-mail is more likely.)
Yesterday I started cleaning off my desktop because I am a terrible computer person (clearly) who saves everything to the desktop and mine was getting a little ridiculous with icons, so it was time toi clean house. Also I dunno if this is fact, but someone told me once that if your desktop was a mess then your computer would be slower, so, I was doing anything I could think of to help this poor machine not be a tortoise.
That's when I found a .txt document on my desktop that was called "Forward.txt". Not knowing what it was, I opened it, and read it, and went "lol wut? where the fuck did this come from?" I was pretty sure it wasn't a virus (can .txt files BE a virus??), so I sent it to Blake's Gmail and asked him if he put it on my computer. He was at work and in case it was a virus, he didn't want to open it there, so he came home and we talked about it (for all he knew, the virus had sent him my e-mail with the file), and he opened the Forward.txt file on this phone. He read it and went, "wtf?" and after he also determined it was just weird text, he did some research and found that the file had definitely been created on my computer by me, or him, and we forgot, or the virus, so we googled some of the text and nothing came up.
We have NO idea wtf this is or where it came from and google gives us nothing. Here's what it says:
( The file was titled "Forward.txt"... )
So!
Question #1: WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT??? IS MY COMPUTER TRYING TO FLIRT WITH ROBOTS???
Question #2: How do I get rid of this virus/mal/adware?
Question #3: Are any of those anti-virus programs worth paying for or should uninstall them all since they're clearly not doing anything right now becauses making my computer slower and giving me more pop ups?
PS. I dyed my hair black. I like it. Here it is with shitty makeup and here it is with chapped lips and zits.
(*Kevin has offered to help me set up professional Gmail for $50/year, which will work with 3 of my domain e-mail addresses, and (I assume) move all my old e-mails onto Gmail's servers. I should have done this AGES ago, I know. The problem is that I never have $50 free on my credit card because I'm a BrokéMom. I did just cancel Audible though, so maybe I can do this soon. I'm good at paying stuff once I've made the commitment to do it, it's actually signing up that's hard to get me to do.)
Okay so I was clearing off my desktop yesterday...wait, let me back up. I have a virus. Or more likely malware. Or adware. Or some fucking thing that makes weird webpages telling me I have a virus (no shit!) randomly open and play audio when I (maybe?) click on links that use the "target="_blank"" tag to open things in a new window (because Blake said it's recently been exploited). I say this because I don't think all websites use it and some websites appear safe (like clicking stuff from TweetDeck, and I think Patreon was the other one, never triggers the weird webpages, but LiveJournal and Facebook definitely do).
This is my 2nd time having a virus or whatnot, in the past year, and I have no idea how I got it. I haven't downloaded music since I discovered Spotify years ago, I use such ancient e-mail software and have never used virus protection, so I know I'm vulnerable and won't even open an e-mail from a name I don't recognize, to the point where most people know better than to e-mail me because I'll probably never open it unless I recognize your "From" name or the "Subject" line is really obvious. I'm getting as paranoid about e-mail as I am about phone numbers, honestly.
Anyway, I do get a lot of terrible virusy spam because my e-mail address is all over the internet, and like I said, I still use SquirrelMail* and have never used virus protection, and it's feasible I got something that way. Doesn't matter. Whatever this thing is, it doesn't seem to happen in FireFox, just Chrome (I dunno about Edge bc who cares?) but we've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Chrome and that hasn't fixed it, and in my day to day life, I use a LOT of Chrome bookmarks and a LOT of Chrome tabs, so by the end of a day, because of this virus thing, my computer is CRAWLING and literally making me scream.
I now have on my computer:
Kaspersky
AVG
Avast
Ad-Aware
McAfee
Stinger
Malwarebytes
...where no software of the kind has ever existed before, and jus about ALL of them now, are making pop ups of their own, trying to get me to buy them or I won't be protected, when none of them seem to be doing SHIT except deleting a few temp files every day that I'm pretty sure are just torrent-related because my torrents stop seeding. (And I realize a virus or whatnot can come from a torrent, and not that this protects me, but I only download from a supposedly private one that you need someone to invite you to and you have to maintain an upload/download ratio to remain, and no one else on the site is complaining of viruses that I can see, so I think e-mail is more likely.)
Yesterday I started cleaning off my desktop because I am a terrible computer person (clearly) who saves everything to the desktop and mine was getting a little ridiculous with icons, so it was time toi clean house. Also I dunno if this is fact, but someone told me once that if your desktop was a mess then your computer would be slower, so, I was doing anything I could think of to help this poor machine not be a tortoise.
That's when I found a .txt document on my desktop that was called "Forward.txt". Not knowing what it was, I opened it, and read it, and went "lol wut? where the fuck did this come from?" I was pretty sure it wasn't a virus (can .txt files BE a virus??), so I sent it to Blake's Gmail and asked him if he put it on my computer. He was at work and in case it was a virus, he didn't want to open it there, so he came home and we talked about it (for all he knew, the virus had sent him my e-mail with the file), and he opened the Forward.txt file on this phone. He read it and went, "wtf?" and after he also determined it was just weird text, he did some research and found that the file had definitely been created on my computer by me, or him, and we forgot, or the virus, so we googled some of the text and nothing came up.
We have NO idea wtf this is or where it came from and google gives us nothing. Here's what it says:
( The file was titled "Forward.txt"... )
So!
Question #1: WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT??? IS MY COMPUTER TRYING TO FLIRT WITH ROBOTS???
Question #2: How do I get rid of this virus/mal/adware?
Question #3: Are any of those anti-virus programs worth paying for or should uninstall them all since they're clearly not doing anything right now becauses making my computer slower and giving me more pop ups?
PS. I dyed my hair black. I like it. Here it is with shitty makeup and here it is with chapped lips and zits.
(*Kevin has offered to help me set up professional Gmail for $50/year, which will work with 3 of my domain e-mail addresses, and (I assume) move all my old e-mails onto Gmail's servers. I should have done this AGES ago, I know. The problem is that I never have $50 free on my credit card because I'm a BrokéMom. I did just cancel Audible though, so maybe I can do this soon. I'm good at paying stuff once I've made the commitment to do it, it's actually signing up that's hard to get me to do.)
