Icon appeared titled: Read This NOW!!!

[Consider-This]

My friend who surfs a lot had an icon appear on her desktop that looked a little like a traffic light and that was titled, Read this NOW!!!

Then she ran something she calls her SpyBot, and she got a message about a malicious script.

Then there began to be overwriting... so she turned her computer off.

What do you know about this...????

[geniusgoalie]

What do you know about this...????

It sounds like your friend has a virus.

[Consider-This]

Soooo
what would you do????

Can that happen even if someone has Norton???

[someonewhois]

Yeah, Norton isn't perfect. It's one of the best, but it's not perfect. SpyBot and AdAware are for spyware (so is Nav04+)... best to just format and start again if it's overwriting stuff.

[Synaesthesiac]

Soooo
what would you do????

Can that happen even if someone has Norton???

Viruses can get past Norton sometimes. I can't speak for everyone, but in my experience if Norton misses something, it can usually be found and deleted here:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

(It's a free virus scan)

[mmj]

Soooo
what would you do????

Can that happen even if someone has Norton???

It looks like you may be infected by a virus that causes 3 or 4 question marks to appear at the end of your questions.

[geniusgoalie]

It looks like you may be infected by a virus that causes 3 or 4 question marks to appear at the end of your questions.

[Consider-This]

Thanks, someonewhois...
I was thinking she had spyware, not virus protection... but I wasn't familiar with SpyBot. Thanks so much.
(About reformatting, that's what Dell told her, too. I just thought there might be something that would kick the virus out or quarantine it without all that work.)

Synaesthesiac... hey, thanks. That's really useful. Appreciate it. I'll pass it on.

mmj, very funny

genius, my feelings exactly.

[Egor]

Does your friend use IE by any chance?

[Consider-This]

What would the implication be, one way or the other?

[Consider-This]

Synaesthesiac -- could you explain a little about your experience that might be similar?

[Synaesthesiac]

Synaesthesiac -- could you explain a little about your experience that might be similar?

I visit my parents every other weekend, and usually while I'm there I like to make sure their computers are running smoothly. There have been a few times my dad's computer caught a virus, despite having Norton Anti-Virus scanning all incoming email and regularly scanning the harddrive. So we'd use Trendmicro's free scan to find + delete the virus(es) each time.

[Egor]

What would the implication be, one way or the other?

Not sure if that's a reply to my post or not but... IE is the most swiss-cheese browser around. Anything acn get through it, without the surfers permission.

[joycelowe]

Get Webroot Spysweeper. It uninstalled 5 different keyloggers and over 500 viruses when I ran it. Sadly, it costs 24.99 US dollars or so for a U.S. description, but you CAN get a 30 day trial.

Make sure you get this program. It is extremely useful.