November 30, 2003

Devil's Workshop

I haven't been idle this weekend, not merely stuffing my face with sidewalk turkey ham and other goodies. Nope, I've been Doing Computer Stuff.

I've had this annoying little problem for a couple of weeks, wherein my start page resets itself to some stupid search engine that seems to specialize in porn. In addition, I mysteriously acquired about a dozen links to porn sites. I blamed the Porn Fairy. I blamed shoddy Microsoftian patches. I even blamed the GM1.
In protest of this, he ate all my share of the chocolate silk pie.
So I Googled around and discovered quite a few other people had this problem, that it was some kind of trojan, not a bit ribbed for my pleasure. One bulletin board, (to whom I would give tons of credit here if I could remember the name, which I can't) had very explicit instructions of how to get rid of it.
I printed them out, followed them to the letter, and violin! No more nasty little Porn Fairy!
Then I did what some of you suggested way back when... I got Mozilla and relegated IE to the back burner.
It's got a bit more learning curve, does Mozilla, to one such as I who got her training wheels strictly on Internet Explorer. I can only guess that if I ever go to a Mac, I'll likely have a stroke. The email itself on Mozilla made me go out and buy stamps, just in case.

I have no idea where the trojan came from. I suspect it could have crept in past a myriad firewalls, security systems, and scans.

So that, in case you wondered, is what I've been doing.
Oh, and redecorating the template a tad.

Update: this has to be the most banal post I've ever written.
I blame the sidewalk turkey.

Posted by LeeAnn at November 30, 2003 04:33 PM
Comments

"Spybot Search & Destroy" is good for preventing your home page from being changed, too. I'd give you the url, if I weren't toasted on thanksgiving wine... :)

Posted by: Solonor at November 30, 2003 06:17 PM

Lavasoft's Ad-Aware is another lovely little program to take care of those annoying self installing programs/cookies/spyware... And hey, its free to non commercial users... http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

Posted by: Tim at November 30, 2003 07:06 PM

Thank you, guys. :) Both of those were listed on the "how to" instructions and I've implemented both.
I think the SpyBot Search and Destroy was the biggest help, though the Ad Aware has always been part of my housekeeping routine.

Posted by: LeeAnn at November 30, 2003 07:12 PM

Welcome to Mozilla, LeeAnn! (I still do my blog posting with IE, though, cuz the shortcut buttons don't show up with Mozilla for some reason, and I cannot possibly type all that html myself...)

Posted by: Susie at November 30, 2003 10:06 PM

There is a modification for MT so that Mozilla shows the buttons for the shortcuts in the edit window (url, bold, all that). But seein' as y'all are on Typepad, It might take group effort to get The Trotts to implement it, since it's a modification to one of the templates on the server (I got installed it for Joanie and it works great).
For a quick work around, try Composite: http://composite.mozdev.org/

Posted by: Greg at December 1, 2003 01:26 AM

Oh wait. YOU'RE not on Typepad. You could install the mozilla-MT fix!

Posted by: Greg at December 1, 2003 01:29 AM

I saw one of those movies - Mozilla vs Mothra I think - when I was a kid. I ferget who won... I think Raymond Burr, who later went on to play Perry Como, a wheelchair bounded laid-back lounge detective. I can't find a URL for it though. Try amazon.com they have more stuff that Walmars. Maybe.

Posted by: Dick Lexic at December 1, 2003 09:18 AM

As a Mac 'R' Us kid, I just recently *heard* of those buttons. Necessity being the mother of us all, I use textEdit to compose and have copy/paste templates for all the html. EZ. ...and MT having a senior moment with a post bothers me not.

Posted by: Claire at December 1, 2003 07:11 PM