Virus

[fpb]

I got a horrendous virus last night and I had to reformat and rewrite my whole hard drive. I had of course saved everything I could think of on external hard drives, but I only realized after starting work that I had lost all my favourites/bookmarks. And it took me hours just to get the machine restarted and properly online. Still, it could have been a Hell of a lot worse.

Comments

Kudos!

[theeditrix.livejournal.com]

Sorry for your trouble, but I compliment your foresight! I am such a scatterbrain and have lost countless valuable data because of that.

Re: Kudos!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It's not over yet. I shoved everything shovable into the external HDs after the virus had got in (mind you, about 90% of my records were there already) and therefore it is absolutely certain that the monster itself is still lurking there - I mean in one or both of the HDs. Of course I haven't connected them with the computer again. But once I was able to go back online, I looked it up and found a freeware utility intended to destroy that specific virus (a piece of malware that tries to force you to buy a supposed antivirus called Antivir - a scam, pure and simple, but a very efficient one). So, as soon as I have time, I will download said utility and clean the external HDs.

Everything I learned about security I learned through blood, sweat and tears. I have had to delete whole memories at least twice. But it's not happening again if I can help it.