The Powers Zone

Is there a “chink” in your pc’s armor?

OK, so I know I beat this issue to death – but it is what it is.

My last article was about having all of the applications required to protect your pc from attacks, and it just so happens that my kids pc got hit…hard!

On the Saturday before Christmas, my dog Toby (a lab/border collie mix) died. If you have a pet, you know just how distressing this event is.  Our pets are part of the family.  So I was in the process of handling all of the details of the aftermath of Toby’s passing, and when I got home from all of that I was a bit sullen. My youngest daughter (10 yrs old) came to me complaining about her computer not working right, so I told her that I would get around to it later when I had some time.  I still had Christmas gifts to wrap, and I just wasn’t in the mood to sit in front of a computer.

So later that afternoon, I found my daughter and asked her what the computer was doing.  She gave me a list of the symptoms, and it sounded like she was hit by a virus – but that was strange because that pc was fully protected…or so I thought!

Come to find out, my oldest daughter had been running some video editing software and had TURNED OFF the virus protection because it was causing problems with her ability to finish the project she was running.  She failed to restart the software.

Later that day, my youngest daughter got on to do some stuff, googled something and followed the trail and BAM she got hit.  It was a nasty one too!

It was one of those YOU HAVE SPYWARE ON YOUR COMPUTER pop-ups that install all kinds of nasty stuff on your pc.  It had the VUNDO virus, a ROOTKIT (which is very bad), some TROJANS and removed any ability to load or install programs.

Well, the VUNDO (I pronounce it VeeUndo) virus was tricky, but I was able to take care of that and the trojan.  But the RootKit is forcing me to wipe the hard drive clean, and start completely over.  That was after about 20 hours of working on the pc.

There are vicious threats all over the web.  Hackers are out in force, trying to steal your information and your identity.  It is up to you to know what the threats are, and how to protect yourself.

I still use free anti-virus software and all of the other protection apps I use are free too.  You can download them at the PowersZone.