It used to be that you had to do something pretty dumb to end up with malicious software on your computer. Now, it seems, all you have to do is go to the wrong website. In my limited experience, since I don't do too many shady things on the internet, torrent sites seem the worst. I went to one yesterday and didn't think when an error popped up. I bet clicking okay is what did it. One of those fake antivirus programs appeared telling me that everything was infected and messing up anything I tried to do. Getting into the right account in safe mode with Spybot - Search and Destroy took care of it but then IE was gimped. I guess Firefox would have been to if I had it installed. I installed Firefox, did some searching and found out to check the LAN Settings under the Connections tab in Internet Options in IE. Sure enough, some proxy setting was checked. Unchecked and works fine. A few months ago I had a similar experience when my wife had installed some coupon program.

Have you had bad experience with this sort of thing and/or what type of action, reactive or proactive, have you taken?

IMO using IE for casual browsing fits "pretty dumb". Even if only because all the malware targets it.

Firefox is as much a target. The solution I found was someone asking a question about IE and Firefox not working after some malware was removed. I prefer to use IE now that it has tabs. I liked Firefox mostly for FireFTP but I don't do too much with my webspace now so I just use the online file manager. Ooh, I also loved Firefox Portable but that was made "obsolete" when the military banned thumbdrives. Now I use iGoogle.

I never have any issues using Firefox + Adblock, I can't even remember the last time AVG/MSE/Defender reported finding anything.

But I don't frequent shady websites either...

The reason I'm running linux right now is because when I was looking at porn the other month my computer got pretty messed up. yea, it started with that fake antivirus thing then just went downhill from there. rather than attempt to clean it up, Linux!

I was running FF with no script, ad block, all the good stuff.
oh well, guess it wasn't good enough.

Yeah, I routinely have no problem. Yesterday was a fluke for me. Still, I'm amazed that simply going to a site, granted I did click on an "error" which I assume let the malware in, can wreak such "havoc". In actuality, though, it was simple enough to overcome. Delete the offending malware with Spybot and uncheck one setting in IE but someone more freaked out may have unnecessarily done a restore or, worse, paid money to the very people hacking their system. I believe I have the popup blocker disabled due to the number of legitimate sites I use that rely on popups for whatever reason. I should probably tweak those settings.

IE is terrible. Switch.

Firefox may be targeted by malware as well, but it has a LOT more ability to protect you, especially when combined with adblock extensions.

Besides, IE is horribly slow on JS, and that's becoming an increasingly large issue.

I've used it and like it (Firefox). I'm just pretty indifferent to browsers now. IE does what I need but I fully appreciate your opinion that Firefox is safer. Maybe I will check it out again. So what are the current "must-have" extensions? I'm not talking about the cool ones that make it prettier but the must have functionality that you (any of you) can't seem to live without.

I work for a web security company and in our experience, most malware is served through ads and most of them target holes in IE, holes in flash, holes in real player, and holes in adobe reader plugin. So even if you use firefox, you can still get infected using the plugins. The best thing in my opinion is flash block + if you can, disable all the plugins you don't need. You can disable adobe reader plugin and still have adobe reader, it will just prompt you each time it tries to open a pdf instead of opening it in your browser window.

That reminds me, I heard on Kim Komando last week that there is a new malware exploit involving PDF files that requires you disable something in the settings to avoid. I think this is what she was talking about.

I like Google Chrome, because it's faster than LIGHTNING.

Yeah, but see I use firefox, and that has never happened to me.

Congratulations.

I've had that same fake antivirus stuff before. I'm pretty careful to avoid troublesome sites (like torrent sites, porn, etc) and when I suspect some malware has been installed, I usually just run MalwareBytes. I mean, really, if you actively torrent, you're just asking for it - prolly 95% of them are virus ridden.

My wife, on the other hand, will click willy-nilly on the internet and install darn near anything.

My kids don't know there are other websites on the internet besides what's on their Favorites lists.

I end up running MalwareBytes about once every 2 months.

It seems that torrents I've looked for are usually okay. It's the unscrupulous websites that activate some code when you browse them.

Anyway, I'm playing around with Firefox again. I installed a Safari-esque theme, FireFTP, and the Google Toolbar. I have to say, I'm really enjoying this again.

My wife had some sort of 'vista security tool' on her laptop. She was having trouble with her wifi connection. It would just cut out. When I went to investigate, this window poped up. It looks like a legit trial version of some sort of anti-virus software. It runs, it finds things, and it wants your money to remove them. As soon as I saw it I knew it was fake; it just felt wrong. I think it was how quick the results showed up. As soon as it started, it found things. When I went to download malwarebytes and I was directed to an entirely different download location on her laptop as on mine, I knew she was infected. I had to transfer malwarebytes on a usb stick, and it took care of it. The symptom they all seem to have in common is that they block updates to the major anti-virus programs. Her connection has been fine since.

ugh, Christ. People still use IE?

Apparently about 60% of the market still does.

IE 7/8 aren't all that bad.

I encountered one of those fake-protection sites just today. It creates a popup window that looks just like the win7 protection center.

Damn, I thought I was safe because, although I have ran Vista since 06' and 7 since the beta, they always had the XP colour scheme.

Which is pretty funny to get when you're on OSX.


Also stop using IE.

I was using firefox.

That 60% is not represented here. I always love that MSDN blog post's comments.

60% of computer users are morons. What else is new?

...which brings us to this post!

Yes, IE 7/8 is that bad. Internet Explorer has a lot of problems. I'm not even talking about superficial rendering glitches, I'm talking about deliberate - malevolent - changes that exist for the sole purpose of making IE incompatible with the standard. Things like odd-named Javascript functions, things you could fix with a ****ing hex editor.

What I'm saying is, every hour that's been spent fixing sites for IE should be shaved off the lives of every IE user. Starting with Tibby.

Why do you hate Canadians so much?

He is Canadian. he just doesn't lile me.

Haha.

suck it

We're making a web app at work. We have to target IE6.

Of course the fun part is that we all have IE7 installed... gonna be great when we try and get it working in IE6 (I did a quick test once like a month ago and it errors on the loading screen).

Wait, Jon'C's a Canadian? WTF?

So, using Firefox again is pretty fun. I gotta relearn where I instinctively go with the mouse to do certain things. I think the feature I enjoy the most is it, by default, not opening links in a new window like certain annoying websites do. Nice to not have to right click a link in the forums to tell it to open in a new tab.

Yeah, but see I use firefox, and that has happened to me.


And I removed it by hand, what a pain in the ass that was. Then I backed up my files and formatted