As some of you may know, my computer is protected with DeepFreeze. But, I inadvertently had it off and visited the trainsmag.com website. All types of things started happening with my computer! The last straw was a RED screen that identified the TRAINS and a related website as dangerous and it was being reported to Microsoft!
Unless this website is deliberately spreading computer viruses Kalmbach may want to shut it down and clean house, making sure it is not wrecking people’s computers before proceeding further.
Every country has a different URL extension that identifies the country (this was invented AFTER the .com, .net, .edu, .gov. etc stuff was already in use). The “.tv” is a small island in the South Pacific and because the letters are also the abreviation for TeleVision, the biggest boon to their ecconomy is renting out URL’s using their country designation. They don’t control what web sites do with the extension but lots of advertisers like to use it to coinside with their Television advertisements.
I suspect that you got into something when your antimalware program was off-line and you may have a problem getting the malware out of your computer. There are ways for the computer illiterate to do so, but “we” often need more professional help in doing so. There are web sites you can go to that will run malware sweeps of your computer that might help and you can buy antimalware programs that come on USB dongles that you boot your computer to that can then run “outside” of your normal operating system to look for the bad programs so they can’t interfer with the sweeps. But this forum is a poor place to try to talk someone through it. I’d suggest you find a guru in your area (professional or friend, or that teenager down the street) that can help you see if your computer has a problem.
May I recommend a site called scamadvisor.com ? This site will tell you who owns any site, where it’s located, where the owners are located, how safe it is to use, etc. I can’t recommend it highly enough: it unmasks websites in a way I’ve never seen before.
One of my computers got hit by something last Friday. The place reparing it says that anti virus will not protect you from it. It just comes in when you click on something, and it disables the anti virus. I don’t know what this was, but I opened one of the sites in the search for locomotive cutaway drawings.
Then I clicked on something there and it began downloading a lot of data. Then everything quit working correctly. It popped up all kinds of stuff including offers to fix problems. It started a big scan process with no way to turn it off. You can’t stop it. It took out the operating system. The computer is not worth fixing.
The repair place says the only way to prevent this is to never click on anything when on the Internet. Is it true that anti-virus will not prevent this kind of attack?
one bit of advise: Unless you are a real computer expert, as soon as your computer starts behaving strangely, really out of control, don’t waste a second but shut it down and remove power as quickly as possible. Then take it to a professional, and let him or her start it and analyze the problem.
That is more or less what I did. The problem arrived the instant the download began. I did shut it down in about 30 seconds. Then I started it again in a couple minutes to see if the nightmare was really happening. It was, so I shut it off again and took it to the computer hospital. I think you are right about shutting it off ASAP. That is what one repair place told me. That is, to not try to run it anymore. They said that, depending on the bug, some of them will continue to work, and go into your files and extract critical data such as bank accounts or SS numbers.
But the question I have is whether anti virus programs protect against this. I have been told by experts that they do not.
I was told that what I got is a hit that messes your computer and then offers to fix it for say $200. If you pay the $200, they take the money and your computer never gets fixed. And there was nothing actually wrong with until they showed up.
The only way for malware to get into your computer is for you to invite it… You do so by downloading things either from the internet or via CD/DVD or USB memory cards, etc. (even “picture frames” that display slideshows have been known to contain malware that loads into your computer when you attach it to put your photos on it!
Anti-malware programs try to insert themselves into the OS such that they look at everything that comes in and before it can execute and warn you about it… but it only knows when something is malware if someone has already seen it and has been able to create a “signature” (the sequence of bits and bites that comprise the program) and put that data into the program that is looing for such signatures. There are also “heuristic” methods that look for “similarities” to known malware and for sequences of instructions that do something to parts of the computer that normal software should not be doing.
So… if you manage to 'invite" some program in that has never been seen before then your anti-malware program cannot detect a known signature and if it cannot detect a similarity or 'intent" of the bad program then it gets in. A “new” malware program is called a “zero-day exploit” because when it is first unleashed that is day zero of its existance and nobody knows about it.
Anti-malware companies are always looking for bad programs so they can add the signatures to their database and update your computer’s copy of that database, but on day “zero”, you are unprotected for the most part.
Some ISPs have anti-malware programs running that try to see what is passing through and will often block them, but again it has to be something that is known for them to see it and block it. Some websites also try to watch for someone hacking into it and planting malware, but not everybody is paid enough to spend that much time looking to see of someone has hack
If you still suspect malware has installed itself on your computer, consider booting from a standalone ‘rescue CD’ to scan and possibly repair your system.
If you go to the trouble to hire a computer ‘expert’ to fix your problem, find one that can also set up your system to dual boot a Linux desktop environment for day-to-day web browsing. Linux is not invulnerable but it is a much smaller ‘attack surface’ than Windoze. Install a friendly web browser (say Firefox) with NoScript or Ublock Origin add-ons.
To recover from a real disaster (like ransomware encryption) be sure you Backup, Backup, Backup your personal data frequently to at least two separate repositories. Portable hard drives are cheap insurance, keep one in your safe deposit box. Cloud storage is nice but a complete backup will take a very long time to upload.
I don’t understand. If there is no way to prevent malware from coming in once you click on something with it, then what is the benefit of an anti-malware program?
The repair place said they can recover all the files for $90 and go no further; or clean up the computer, reinstall the OS, and reinstall the recovered files for $170. Or they will sell me a used Windows 7 machine with all my files and programs installed on it for $300. He said that computer is about 5 years old, and something like “business class” whatever that means. It is a small tower.