On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 13:44:05 -0400, Rick Merrill wrote:

> Quercus Robur wrote:
>> My wife just turned on her computer and up popped a window stating "You need
>> to download XXX to clean up your computer. You have visited adult sites."
> ...
>
> QR that popup is itself the virus and a phish to get you to "download"!!!!
>
> Do not respond to the popup.
>
> I recommend SUPERantispyware and PCRescue and of course you
> already have an antivirus for your email, right?
>

Does anyone else tire of the "Anti-spyware, anti-virus, anti-adware"
mantra? :-)

Of course, those are regular components of daily life for Windows users,
so I guess it doesn't really matter if they tire of it or not. It is
still a pain.

All you really need are a pop-up blocker (Firefox has one built-in that is
reasonably good--and you can pretty easily get an ad-blocker for it, too,
that prevents a good deal more of crud from being able to get in), a
decent anti-virus program (AVG Free does a decent job and also detects
many types of malware), and HijackThis, which is a Windows utility to help
find things that have installed themselves into places like the Windows
registry.

You can eliminate two-thirds of that stuff if you don't use DOS or Windows,
by the way. (DOS viruses are pretty much out of circulation, but they are
still possible.)

-- Mike