Ben Hovinga

You or someone you know may have been a victim of account hacking viruses. I am going to show you how to spot it and fix it.

I am going to use facebook as an example because a friends facebook account has recently been hacked but this example can apply to just about any account like msn, twitter, even your bank account.

How It Happens

On a recent attack on my friends facebook account, one of his friends account has been hacked. This hacked account sent mass messages to his/her friends on facebook with a link to go see a video, and posted on his/her wall the same link. This link took my friend to a fake youtube page, a page that looks like youtube but is at a different web address, and then a pop-up opened saying that you needed to download software to see this video. My friend installed this software but later found out that it took over his facebook, this virus did the same thing as his friend, sent messages and links. But there is a deeper function, most of the time that is just to spread the virus around the web, the real function of the virus could be to steal information of destroy data on your computer.

Preventing Infection

Well now that you know what happens its pretty simple to see how to prevent any infection. I would say not to click on any link but that would contradict the point to sharing websites like facebook. Just be aware of the link address and the content, if the website looks like youtube but doesn’t have the http://www.youtube.com in the address bar then don’t click on it. If a website wants you to download software to view a video or photo don’t allow it to. Get away from that website as soon as you can, and tell your friend that their account may have been hacked then give them a link to this post so they can fix it.

Fixing The Problems

Well if you have been infected then you will need to fix it. Don’t create a new account and delete the old one because that wont fix anything, that will just delete everything you have and the virus can take over your new account. The first step is to scan your computer for viruses. avast! antivirus home edition is a good, free antivirus program that I personally have been using with no problems ever. After the virus has been removed from the computer all you need to do is change your password. To make a secure password you can use a password generator but that uses makes a password of random letters and numbers and it can be hard to remember. An easy way to make a secure password that you can remember is to make sure it is at least 8 characters long and contains at least one upper case letter one lower case and one number. For extra security you could add a symbol too. After all of this, make sure that you contact your friends not to click on the links and to tell them to read this if they have.

Spam on the rise

I was going through my statistics for my website and found that just recently I have been getting a lot of spam on an old post from a few months back. It’s a good thing that I have a spam catcher that takes care of deleting them for me. It has only been happening within the past few days and I haven’t posted anything until today. I suppose that my blog is starting to get attention, even if it is just spam bots. But you have to start somewhere.

I plan to be writing some more once I get settled with work. So keep on your toes.

As everyone knows April 1st is the pranksters day known as April Fools Day. April Fools Day can be quite fun. The joy of putting a fake spider on your co-workers desk, who happens to have Arachnophobia. But you need to be careful for yourself on this day of lols, mostly due to computer pranks also. April Fools is a dangerous day for computer users as it is one of the top days in the year when computer viruses are releases.

But what can you do to prevent this? Here are my top five tips:

5. Be aware of what pages you are viewing. Try not to go to any websites that you have not been to before.

4. Know who you communicate with. When using an instant messenger or checking email don’t open any links or files unless it relates to the discussed topic at hand. The person who your talking to may already have a virus that spams his/her contact list.

3. Keep updated! Check that all of your software is up to date, most updates are security fixes to prevent problems.

2. Get Protection! Make sure you have anti-virus software and that its up to date. If you don’t have any anti-virus software? Here is a free one. Just wants you to register once a year.

1. Abstinence. You can’t get infected if the computer is not on.

That’s it. Spread this around to help everyone to stay computer safe this April 1st.

So today my brother was on MSN when a friend sent him a message. He clicked the link and downloaded a virus.

ahha is this you? http://hi5-photos.us/viewimages.php?={YOUR EMAIL HERE}

If you receive that message do not click it. It sent to me but when I clicked it, handy FireFox kicked in and asked if I wanted to download a Binary File. I got suspicious when a photo site wants me to download a program. My brother then ran down and told me not to click anything from him. That his computer got a virus and was sending everyone on his list the link.

So if you receive a link like this DO NOT CLICK IT! Or any link that wants you to download an EXE file.

Oh ya and the file that it wants you to download is DSC0003141-JPG.EXE but it will not show up on a virus scan.