Cox/McCaffee scam?

[Morella]

What the fuck is this? My daughter's computer is running dog slow, and instead of the normal background screen, there is a message that there is spyware on it and a place to click to fix it. If you click that, it goes to a cox.com page that gives you a bunch of bullshit instructions and then tells you that if none of that works, download their FREE McCaffee. I read the EULA, and it's free for a year, then they start charging you, and during that first year, they are free to put as many popup ads on your computer as they want to.

Of course we ran Spyware detectors. One of them found 3 problems, and another found 161, but removing those didn't make it run any faster. I changed IE so that 3rd party cookies were blocked. She had them set to always accept, which is the equivalent of lying in the street with your legs spread and holding a "FUCK ME" sign.

We were installing a new copy of McCaffee on her machine last night, and hopefully it got the new definitions. It said it did. The problem was, at some point during the scan, it just quit, and the window disappeared. I found an icon in the quicklaunch area that came up with two messages saying that the computer needed to be rebooted. We tried to reboot it, and after an hour, the hard disk was still flashing.

Has anyone heard of this virus with a link to Cox? I can't imagine why anyone but Cox or McCaffee would put that virus on there, but I couldn't find any news on it last night.

[Scary Guy]

Not a clue, however "spybot search & destroy" is a favorite of mine. Stop using IE as well. Get "Firefox" with the "Noscript" and "Adblock plus" plugins. This solves half of everyones problems. Also since you are using a Micro$oft OS you should install their anti-spyware offering "windows defender".

Those are the only three things I really recommend. I don't know about anti-virus because I don't get viruses (yeah, I'm either really stupid or just that damned good with computers). I hear good things about "clamwin" though.

[Flymanj3]

Sounds just like a couple things I ran into but don't remember if it was McCaffee. It really tied things up and just giving me one warning pop-up after another saying 'their' software will clear things up - ya, right. I finally had to wipe the drive and start fresh

Now I use Firefox along with "stopsign" as the anti-stuff - got a couple more 'warnings' where they wanted me to download their stuff but stopsign flushed them out as adware and wiped THEM out.

[Scary Guy]

adaware isn't bad, but it also isn't free either. I don't recommend stopsign at all, seriously.

[EternalCombustion]

adaware isn't bad, but it also isn't free either. I don't recommend stopsign at all, seriously.

I agree about Stopsign. It was similar to what Morella described when it first came out. I remember my wife's computer got infected with stopsign when it first emerged a few years ago. She was trying to install a screensaver (which I tried to tell her to avoid) and stopsign snuck its way on her computer. I could run an uninstall which prompted a reboot and when windows started back up stopsign immediately re-installed itself. To finally remove stopsign I ran the uninstall and on the reboot when into safe mode and had to edit the registry to keep it from coming back.

A couple of years later I saw that stopsign was evidently trying to go legit, but that earlier attack left a bad taste my mouth.

[Flymanj3]

adaware isn't bad, but it also isn't free either. I don't recommend stopsign at all, seriously.

Sorry, meant found it as spyware - anyhow, Whats wrong with stopsign? - used both McCaffee and Norton before and both screwed up on me. Using Stopsign for over a year now with no problems.
Seems to me to work pretty good

[Riff Raff]

My son D/L'ed something and a program called "Anti-Virus XP 2008" installed itself. It changed my wallpaper to a warning, changed my homepage, gave me pop-ups saying I had 721 known viruses, and would not let me do a system restore. I did a google search and found this program "infects" your system and tries to get you to buy it's program it remove it's previous program. I D/L'ed Malwaresbytes' Anti-Malware and 20 minute scan and a reboot and there is no trace of Anti-virus XP 2008 now. Plus Malware was free.

[Scary Guy]

Sorry, meant found it as spyware - anyhow, Whats wrong with stopsign? - used both McCaffee and Norton before and both screwed up on me. Using Stopsign for over a year now with no problems.
Seems to me to work pretty good

Read what EternalCombustion wrote I've seen what he said almost verbatim on a few systems I fixed.

Norton and McAffee are crap though. I liked McAffee back in my DOS days, that's about it. Monkey B, Sunday, and a few other regular viruses that kept poping up on friends floppies were annoying.

[cadlack]

Get a Mac. Been a Mac user since 1990. I know they are more expensive, but you do get what you pay for... You wouldn't buy cars the way you buy a computer. Would you buy an inexpensive car with a known suspect engine? I have NEVER had even the slightest problem with any intrusive/malicious activity from emails or websites and I am always surfing "the wrong side of the tracks". My Windows box on the other hand has been blown up beyond recovery. It's like it wasn't even my machine anymore! I am not a Mac evangelist either. Just have experience with both.

[Morella]

I had both a Betamax and a VHS at one time, so I know what you mean. You spent a lot more money to get a Betamax, there weren't any tapes for it, and still, people went with VHS. Go figger.

[Scary Guy]

I had both a Betamax and a VHS at one time, so I know what you mean. You spent a lot more money to get a Betamax, there weren't any tapes for it, and still, people went with VHS. Go figger.

That was because there was more porn on VHS even though Beta was (and still is) a superior format.



Cadlack, Mac might be a superior OS (since it has a BSD core), however Windows has all the application support. You can get the same effect if you install Linux on to your IBM/PC compatible machine too AND get the bonus advantage of not having to pay an arm and a leg for the proprietary hardware!

I've used apple too, it's shit, sorry. I also like how cadlack used the world "evangelist" too because mac users remind me way too much of fundies.

Anyhow my point is the more users you have using a specific system the more applications will be coded to run on that system, this includes the viruses.

[Morella]

If you want a steel firewall, a VMS box is the way to go. I've never heard of anyone breaking into one. We have a few here, but they're all powered down, because I don't have any use for them.

I don't understand why every machine has to be on the Internet, anyway. My laptop is the only one that is...the rest of the machines are on a LAN, but some people feel like they have to obey those "your printer driver needs an upgrade , download and install this" messages. Why? It's working. I disable the daemons that shit out those messages.