You have probably been surfing or working across the internet before, then suddenly, a box pops up and says: “You have been infected with X amount of viruses, trojans, and spyware,” or something similar. Then asks you to click here to run a full scan.

Now this is not something you should panic over, but rather calmly assess the situation before making any sudden attempts to fix it yourself. First, do not immediately click to scan your system, because if this is a rogue virus, then clicking scan will further infect your system and pull down more nasty programs.

At this point, if you are at your place of employment, you should immediately contact your IT Department and let them handle it from here.

For everyone else, check to make sure this program is not your systems antivirus program, read everything on the page carefully. If you cannot determine this, do not click anything and never give them your credit card or other personal information.

Immediately attempt to close it out with task manager by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del, then click Task Manager. Go to your processes tab and close out any unfamiliar processes until the windows goes away. Do not worry about closing out the wrong thing, except maybe unsaved work, the rest of the processes will reload when you restart your computer.

Now once you have the program closed out, run a few scans to make sure you are not infected. Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware are great tools to get this accomplished.

What happens if you are infected and cannot bring up the Task Manager? You can find out more on how to remove these in the article named: How to remove fake or rogue antivirus software.

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A rogue or fake antivirus is a program crafted to took look like a genuine antivirus program, though it is in fact a virus that has or has attempted to infect your computer. To learn more about recognizing these programs refer to How to recognize fake or rogue antivirus software.

Now that you know this program is bad, how do you get rid of it? The biggest obstacle most people face is that they cannot run or install any programs to remedy the situation. The rogue antivirus locks everything down and will not allow any executables to run.

The trick to overcome this, is to bring up the Task Manager before the virus loads. If you can accomplish this, most rogue viruses cannot close the Task Manager out if it is already running. Once you have the Task Manager up, do not close it out. Leave the Task Manager open the entire time, you may need it again. This will allow you to find and kill the virus processes.

Restart the system, if you do not have to log in, then start hitting the Ctrl-Alt-Del keys as soon as you see the mouse pointer appear. If you need to log in, then start hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del as soon as you hit enter after typing in your password. Once the Task Panel appears, choose Task Manager. This may take a few attempts, so keep trying until you get it to come up.

Now click on the processes tab and start searching for the bad processes. Since these rogue processes can have many different names, you will have to try to close ones you are not familiar with, experiment with this a little. If you close out a wrong process, the system may reboot, just try it again, but try to remember the ones you already attempted or write them down.

Now that you have more control over your computer, let’s download some software. They’re four programs you will need to completely scan and remove these viruses. Click and download these free tools Ccleaner, Malwarebytes, SuperAntiSpyware, and Spybot S&D.

Once these are downloaded and installed, then proceed to cleanup your system. First, to save scan times and reduce risk of reinfection, turn off Windows System Restore. This process will vary depending on which version of Windows you are running. In XP, just right-click on “My Computer” and select properties, then click the System Restore tab.

Then run CCleaner on your system to remove the temp and junk files, viruses like to hide there. After that, click on Tools > Startup in CCleaner and delete the start-up entries for the virus processes you killed out with Task Manager.

Next run the other programs SuperAntiSpyware, Malwarebytes, and Spybot S&D, respectively and follow the steps to remove everything that is found. Running the scans a second time is a good idea, just to make sure all the harmful stuff is gone.

Before opening Internet Explorer again, reset it back to manufacturer settings by Right-Clicking on the icon and clicking properties. Go to the advanced tab and click reset at the very bottom. This only applies to Internet Explorer 7 or above.

All it takes is for your hard drive to go out and that is it, unless you have a backup plan.  What about the unexpected, like a fire, tornado, flood, or any other major catastrophe, we all hope it won’t happen, but it could.  Do you have a disaster recovery plan in place to retrieve all your precious data when or if something like this happens.

A local backup to an external hard drive or DVD is great if your hard drive fails, but what if some other disaster strikes, then even your local backup copies could be destroyed.  Now I am not try to scare you, but let’s face reality, it can and does happen quite frequently.  If it does, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to recover all of your hard work, pictures of family and friends, music, and more.

There are many different online backup companies out there that provide a great service.  You can simply install a small program and configure it to constantly monitor and backup your data automatically while you are connected to the internet.  Some services will  configure itself and then allow you to make changes to what you want backed up.

Most of these companies do not charge a lot for this type of service, especially when they offer you a physically secure and encrypted backup of all your data.  We have become affiliated with a couple  such companies. Mozy offers 2GB of backup for free and unlimited backup for only $4.95/Month/PC.  Elephant Drive is another excellent choice, they also start at $4.95/MO.  Elephant Drive does not have a free account, but they do offer a 15 day FREE TRIAL. Go ahead and try them out below.

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Before I get started with the tips let me state, that nothing is fool proof.  However, some of the tips I will share with you, if followed, will greatly reduce or possibly eliminate your chances of getting these nasty critters on your computer.

Tip #1

Always have an up to date Antivirus/Spyware program running on your PC.  Now a lot of people will only use the free stuff, which is fine, free antivirus software is better than none at all.  However, they usually do not provide you with complete protection.  Most free antivirus programs will only provide you with basic antivirus defense but does not include firewall protection, active url monitoring, and other great features that you can get with a fully paid edition.

Most commercial antivirus programs include web filtering, email filtering, firewall integration, and much more to provide a much better defense against attacks.  Also most high speed internet providers do offer free commercial grade antivirus protection to their customers.  Check with your internet provider. My top recommendations for commercial antivirus suites are respectively Kaspersky Internet Security, PC Tools, andTrend Micro Internet Security Pro.  These are complete Internet Security Suites that do their job well and do not use a great deal of system resources.

However, if you are intent on using freeware, I have great recommendations for those as well.  Keep in mind, although they offer great protection, they are not a complete security suite. Most offer upgrades to their full suite.  The top free antivirus programs I recommend are Avast and AVG respectively.

Tip #2

Find and use a web-based email provider such as Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and there are plenty of others.  Not only do these let you access your email from anywhere, but they have built in Viruses Scanners that will scan your email attachments before you ever receive them.  If a virus is found the attachments are usually removed automatically.

Tip #3

Use caution while reading Email or Private Messages and links from Social Networking Sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and others.  When you see links in post or your private messages, do not automatically click on them.  First check to see if it looks legit and from someone you know.  Also, before clicking make sure the headline looks like something that a friend would send you.  Hold on, don’t click it yet.  Hover over it with your mouse, and look at the status bar down on the bottom left hand corner of your internet browser.  This is the destination url or link.  Make sure it matches the headline you are clicking on, and verify spelling.  If the link looks weird, Don’t Click It!

Tip #4

Be very careful of the websites you visit.  Some webmasters are not very nice and will embed malicious code in their site that will download automatically to you PC when visited.  However, remember Kaspersky Internet Security that I mentioned earlier in this post, they are great about blocking access to these web pages and will let you know, if it possibly contains bad code.

Tip #5

One final tip for now. Be aware of gaming sites. Quite a few of these sites are known for spawning adware, spyware, and yes even viruses.  Investigate these potential sites before you visit.  If you have questions about a particular site, ask someone, or consult a professional computer tech, or submit it to us to investigate for you.

Hope this provides you with valuable information to help you stay protected while surfing the World Wide Web!

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Most common phishing attempts come directly to your email inbox.  They appear to be from your bank, credit card company, email provider, social network site, or many other organizations that you may have an affiliation with.  Below is a short list of common types of phishing scams you may encounter.

• An email that appears to be coming from your bank, telling  you that their has been fraudulent activity on your account, then asks you to click a link to verify your personal account information.
• An email that appears to come from your email provider or social network telling you that your account has been locked for security purposes, then wants you to verify by clicking a link and filling out a form.
• A mistyped web address taking you to a page that looks like the site you are trying to access and they are just waiting for you to log in.

The list goes on, but they are all similar in the respect that they are trying to trick you into handing them your information.

Okay, now you are most likely wondering, what do I do?  How do I identify these scams?  Great news, most of these scams are pretty easy to avoid, it just requires a little attention to detail.

First, you should really get familiar with your company or website’s policies regarding asking for personal information.  Most reputable companies will never ask you for this by email.  If you do receive an email like this, hover over the link without clicking it.  Most web browsers and email programs will let you see where the link is actually going to take you before you click.  While hovering over the link with the mouse pointer, look down on the bottom left of your browser or email client and see where is says it will take you.  Look at this very close, if it is not the website you should be going to, don’t click it. Report this as spam or delete it.

Avoiding scams from mistyped web addresses or urls is easy, just verify it is correct, down to the letter, before entering any information.

Online email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and others will help you out with this problem.  They have very good anti-phishing capabilities built right in to their system.  When their system finds an email that does not appear to be coming from who it says it is coming, their system automatically sends it to the spam folder.  Most web browsers now have phishing filters built into them, so do a lot of reputable toolbars.  I recommend turning these on, they will definitely help. I admit, I am not a be fan of most toolbars, but if you have them, check to see if they have an anti-phishing filter built in and if so, turn it on.

Check back for shortly for my next topic about toolbars, which ones are safe, and which oens to avoid.

Browse Safely!
Jason Seabolt
Froggy IT Solutions