Trojans – nope, I’m not talking about condoms

Written by TinaDonahue on February 19, 2010 - 0 Comments
Categories: Just slightly off topic

I’m referring to malware – Zbot, Zeus, Networm, whatever the virus-du-jour happens to be.

Damn, it’s hard enough to deal with normal computer glitches (slow uploads, screens freezing up, the green bars that never move), without the added problem of this crap.

Yesterday, I received an email from a writer I know. There wasn’t a subject line, but I thought – hey, no biggie – sometimes I’m fast on the draw when it comes to hitting the send button and shoot off messages with no subject line. I opened the email and inside there was a link. Again, I thought nothing of it. Oftentimes, writers send each other links with interesting articles or photos or whatever. No need to waste time explaining what you sent.

Sooooo, I clicked on the link. A page came up with four letters on it. Again, I didn’t think too much about it. I just assumed the writer had sent me a link that didn’t work. I returned to my job without a second thought, until later that day.

In my email account there was an urgent email from the same writer. The subject line was “Don’t open the last email sent from me.” Oh-uh, I thought and opened this one and read that her email account had been hijacked by a hacker and that she hadn’t sent the first email and link. Sweating badly, I scoured the internet to see just what the hell I had opened. Seems it was a real nasty – the Zbot virus. Crap.

I immediately did a scan with my anti-virus software. Trouble is, a prompt popped up stating that my software was one day out of date. Shit. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. All of my files are on this computer – my entire life…novels, research, work for my other job, financial data.

As my heart continued to palpitate, I tried to remove the out-of-date software so I could replace it with the new stuff to get rid of the virus. Trouble is, the out-of-date software wouldn’t accept my password to remove it. I thought I was gonna die. I finally got in touch with the techs who handle this kind of stuff for me. After numerous tries, they finally came up with a password that worked. I removed the old stuff and replaced it with the new. Immediately, the virus was quarantined and removed from my system.

I had one moment of blessed relief and then I was f-ing pissed.

Damn these creeps who are doing this. Damn the criminals who’re trying to steal my financial data. Damn the pimply teenagers who’ve got nothing better to do than to screw up working peoples’ computers. Damn them all.

I hope when (or if) the authorities catch them they put them away for life. It’s about time someone took this shit seriously and stopped it.

Opening up an email – from someone I know and trust – cost me five hours of time. Five hours I’ll never get back.

I want to be on the jury when one of these creeps is tried in a court of law. I will give them f-ing hell.