NASTY BAD VIRUS AT FACEBOOK - BE CAREFUL!

Hi everybody!

I finally decided to open a Facebook account the day before yesterday. I had refrained from doing it for a long time, because I had heard scary virus stories about Facebook. But I have family living in other states, including some of my nieces who have babies I have never gotten to see yet. If I had a Facebook profile, I could look at all the pretty baby pictures!

Pretty cool! I fixed up my profile page and yesterday, I wanted to upload some photos. I clicked on "upload photos" from my computer. A popup box opened up telling me that in order to upload photos, I needed to download a "Facebook Plugin".

Well, dummy me, I didn't know... So I clicked "OK".

What I immediately got was an all-out attack on my computer's system. It installed an "Antivirus Soft" software onto my computer, which completely took over my operating system, and NO PROGRAM on my computer would work, whatsoever! Couldn't open any program at all, and could not get on the internet. Nothing would work!

Then, I immediately was attacked at least 24 times by a hacker who tried to dump "BankerFox.a" Trojan onto my computer. Fortunately, my many anti-virus and security programs blocked this trojan, though they attempted numerous times to force it onto my computer.

I was later able to get the virus off my computer, after 6 hours on the phone with a service technician from HP, who was not able to help me restore my computer so I could get it repaired and able to get back on the internet. But tried really hard to help. Her name was "Alfieri" and the call center where she works is in the Philippines. (Thanks, Alfieri! See! I did learn how to spell your name!)

The worst thing about this, was that I could not get either my Internet Explorer nor my Avant Browser (works off of IE), to display internet pages. So I could not get to Windows Update, nor get anywhere else, either, to try to download what I needed to update my system.

Everything else was working ok - I just could not get the internet to display in the browsers, even though my computer was connected to the internet with a cable broadband connection!

What did I finally have to do to get back on the internet?

Well, it was either take my computer in to the experts, and pay a big pile of money for a complete system recovery, or think of something else...

I remembered I had an AOL disk. AOL is a completely different browser, and does not depend on Internet Explorer settings.

So I installed the "Free for Broadband" AOL service, which gave me a new AOL browser. The software built new internet connections, with corresponding network adapters... Remember this in an emergency: AOL software can "fix" computer problems. Especially connections and network adapters! It can even fix other things on your computer!

And I was able to get back on the internet again.

Even though I have now gone to Microsoft and downloaded a new copy of Internet Explorer 7, my IE browser will STILL not display web pages. Just opens up, says it's "connecting", but doesn't do it - just stays as a blank page with nothing!

I am still working on it.

The good thing is that I had good security software, and was able to catch this thing before it completely wrecked my computer! And that I was able to think of a way to get connected again!

But most people will end up with a torn up computer from this thing.

The virus is called "Antivirus Soft".

And the trojan is "BankerFox.a"

Really nasty stuff, folks.

The fake "Antivirus Soft" program completely takes over your system. It will tell you it did a scan of your computer and that you have all kinds of virus and trojans on it. Then it says "Click to clean your computer". When you do, it tells you that as soon as you go buy the software, it will clean up the viruses. (Which no one in their right mind would click on, after all that mess!)

So just be very aware.

If you are at Facebook, or at any social networking site, or really anyplace at all, and,

If you get a box saying you have to download something, and you did not specifically ASK to download something, JUST SAY NO!!!!

And BE ESPECIALLY CAREFUL AT FACEBOOK!!!!!