Unpleasant things and how to avoid them.

Bad Instructions   Bonzi Buddy   Chain Letters   Email Notifications   Fake Warnings   Gator   Get Rich E-mails   Install on Demand   Phone Diallers   Practical Jokes   Slightly Different Addresses   Take me off your mailing list   Virus-hoax e-mails   Xupiter

 

Viruses and pornography on the internet are mentioned often, and there are well publicised ways of avoiding them. There are other unpleasantnesses, though, which we can’t deal with until we recognise them.

Protect Yourself

To begin with, there are three programs that no computer should be without. They’re all free, too. They are AdAware, SpyBot Search and Destroy and Zone Alarm You may believe that if you have the latest version of Windows you’re protected, but this isn’t so. A recent set of tests by a consumer organisation showed that a built-in Windows firewall stopped unauthorised incoming traffic but allowed anything already on a computer unrestricted access to the Internet.

If you’re having trouble with a “hepful utility”—like a fancy toolbar—that generates pop-ups, changes your home page or otherwise drives you dippy, check for suspect registry entries with HijackThis. Please read all the information on the page. You will be directed to instructions and FAQs. There is an attached forum where someone will help you to analyse the HijackThis log, but they particularly ask that you read and follow the instructions before you post. If there's a heap of spyware on your computer, the log file will be longer than necessary—and they're long enough as it is.

The same site has information about and a removal tool for CoolWebSearch, one of the hardest-to-remove browser hijackers you can hope not to encounter.

This site gets very busy. If it times out, try again later. 

Fake Warnings

Ever see a message box like this? It seems to be a genuine message from your browser. It isn't. It's an advertisement. Should you respond, you could well be offered a piece of “betrayware”, a program purporting to be a spy remover but which is in fact itself spyware. Increasingly, spyware distributors are offering “anti-spyware” utilities which will indeed eliminate some spyware—but will replace it with their own! Click the close button.

Here's another one.

Any of these “messages” can make you feel worried and anxious to find out more.

Some offer free scans. As often as not, they then present you with a list of false positives, but say that they can't remove them until you've paid for the product. Some even go so far as to name the best-known real anti-spyware programs as malware and offer to remove them. Don't pay. Don't click. Close the box if it's polite enough to have a close button. Otherwise, close your browser. Once installed, some of these nasties can be very hard to remove. This page has lists of known and trusted anti-spyware that you should have installed. 

Bonzi Buddy

People are taken in by this pest. They think it sounds wonderful. They download it deliberately and even email it to their friends. What it really is and does is explained at Pest Patrol. A long thread with input from many people who found themselves hosting the Bonzi monster and had heaps of trouble cleaning it out told that one person was so desperate that she actually reformatted her hard disk! SpyBot would have been a less drastic—and equally effective—solution. 

Slightly Different Addresses

Watch out for websites with an address almost the same as, say, that of your bank, or of a reputable information page, search engine or anti-virus company. Unscrupulous people use these so that a typing error can mean you get their nasty website instead of the one you were after. If you think something doesn't look right, obey your instincts and leave. 

Email Notifications

Microsoft does not send emails asking you to install anything. Banks don't send emergency letters that take you to a page where you're asked to enter account details. Letters that say your computer has been broadcasting spam or is infected with a virus are usually virus laden. If you feel unsure, you can always email and ask—but using the address you normally use, NOT the one in the fake email. 

Gator

Gator’s another mean one. You can download a free screensaver or something equally inconsequential, and as you click through all the “Next” buttons you stop trying to read the words in every grey box. Without realising it, you agree to install Gator, and then the fun starts. Read about Gator at Pest Patrol or Fear Factor. Get rid of it with SpyBot. 

Xupiter

Another pest that installs by stealth is Xupiter. The Fear Factor has a page about that one, too. 

Install on Demand

Programs that you don’t want to have on your computer are greatly assisted by a setting in Internet Explorer—Install on Demand. The idea is that if you click on a link to a page in , eg, Japanese characters, you’ll automatically download the correct font. This is extraordinarily helpful—provided that you can understand Japanese. It’s also intended to download the appropriate player or plug-in when you click on something that your computer isn’t capable of displaying. However, you may not be willing to allow the Marvellous Monstrous Movie Machine to take up ISP time downloading itself, and you may not want to give it space on your hard disk. You might prefer just to forgo looking at or listening to the (probably inane) piece that someone has emailed to you. The point is, you should decide what gets downloaded, every single time. Make sure that that checkbox is cleared—then you won’t be downloading things you don’t want—including spyware like the three mentioned above.  

Phone Diallers

If you’re not a millionaire, these are a menace. They are tiny programs that manage to break your Internet connection away from your own service provider and redial through a charge-by-the-minute service. They’re picked up during incautious browsing, often enough by someone who isn’t the primary user. The user can be unaware of the parasite’s presence until they receive a heart-stopping telephone bill.

To protect your computer from this sort of hidden hazard, see the article on Spam. 

Virus-hoax e-mails

A new virus was discovered this morning. It has already brought New York’s financial district to a standstill and caused x million dollars’ worth of damage.

Delete the e-mail and, of course, forward it to absolutely nobody.

If you’re still uncomfortable, do this:

• Go to a search engine—Google would be my choice.
• Type in the name of the supposed virus.
• Read the results of your search.

There are any number of these circulating, but they usually start in a similarly dramatic way, giving all sorts of frightening figures and often using the names of well-known anti-virus companies in fake quotes. They go on, usually, with instructions to
(a) delete something
and
(b) to forward the e-mail to everyone in your address book.

Well, that’s just how real viruses behave. They delete or change things, and they try very hard to propogate by sending themselves to everyone with whom you’re in contact, so these e-mails are in themselves a sort of low grade virus.
The things most often marked by them for deletion are either important files in your computer or genuine e-mails which you are directed to recognise from some wording in the subject line.

Virtual greeting cards are a favourite target. So is the file sulfnbk.exe. This file allows you to use long file names. Without it, you’d be limited to eight letters and no spaces in every file name in your computer. Someone thinks it would be an enormous joke to frighten people into thus handicapping themselves. They are helped in their efforts by the fact that this particular file has a very ugly black icon. It looks nasty, so it’s easy to believe the hoax. 

Chain Letters

These don’t set out to have you damage your computer, but they can be a very real annoyance. Like virus hoaxes, they ask you to forward them to everyone in your address book. Some ask as well that you send something—a postcard, perhaps—to a certain real person at a real address.

Others claim that a small sum of money will be donated to a worthy cause for every email forwarded. Often, the worthy cause is medical help for a terminally ill child. Just how the person making the donations is supposed to know how many copies of the email were forwarded isn’t explained.

Some, like the chain letters that used to circulate through ordinary mail, suggest that something bad will happen if you fail to send the email on.

There’s usually a collection of email addresses at the top of the letter. That’s poor for a start. The forwarder is sending you and all of the other recipients copies of each other’s addresses. That’s probably not something you want.

If the person who sent the chain letter to you is a friend with whom you regularly exchange emails, let them know they’ve been hood-winked. Otherwise, just delete the letter and forget it. 

Get Rich E-mails

From time to time you may receive e-mails that invite you to take part in money-making schemes. Usually you’ll delete them without looking, either because the sender is unknown or because the subject is obvious. A cunning means of obtaining other people’s money has nevertheless enjoyed success for several years. The subject may be a plea for assistance. The writer describes themselves as a citizen of a country that you recognise as being politically unstable. They say that they need safe-keeping for a huge amount of money—many millions, usually—and ask if you will send your bank account number so that they can temporarily deposit their fortune in your account. In return for your understanding and kindness they will give you a percentage of their money to keep. Thousands of people, apparently, have fallen for this one and had their bank accounts emptied overnight.  

Take me off your mailing list

You receive an e-mail advertising something. It’s usually quite a dull something, in which you have no interest. There’s a note on the e-mail that says,
“If you want to be taken off our mailing list, click here.”
DON’T click the link, and delete the e-mail immediately.
This e-mail is testing reams of e-mail addresses that have been generated more or less at random. When someone clicks as asked, they will not be taken off a mailing list; they will be transferred from the long list of possibilities to a much shorter, but growing, list of real e-mail addresses, which will then be passed on to unethical advertisers who may feel free to bombard them with unwanted material. 

Practical Jokes

These can be as simple as saying, with the intention of being terribly witty, something hurtful. A favourite is, in answer to a question on a forum,
“Unplug the computer, replace it carefully in the box and take it back to the shop. You’re too stupid to have one!”
Ignore, and remember that they had the reply in their mind before they ever saw your question—which they probably couldn’t answer anyway. People who use this are overlooking the fact that ignorance is NOT stupidity. In fact, asking questions is a known criterion of intelligence. Also, obviously, they’re not thinking at all, just dying to repeat something that they heard at lunchtime.

Another is to send someone to a site where something unpleasant will happen. This may originate in a forum or be sent in an e-mail. Something like, “Look at this picture really hard and try to see what’s wrong with it.”
Always ignore this sort of thing, and delete it immediately.
It will have a clickable link, and may include a further instruction to turn your speakers up. After some seconds, the picture being studied will change dramatically and a frightening sound will be played. 

Bad Instructions

Some jokes are intended to make you do something you won’t like. Holding down the Alt key and tapping F4 closes a program, and can also break your Internet connection, depending on how you have it set up.
Just be aware that this is not a genuine answer, and ignore it—unless, of course, you were asking how to close a program!
I’ve seen this given as a “solution” to a number of problems.

A much nastier one is the instruction to type
“Format C:”.
Ignore this, and remember the poster’s name. They aren’t likely ever to give good advice.
It’s unlikely that you would go through with the operation; you would see plenty of warning notices along the way. Still, the poster of this instruction doesn’t much care that they’ve directed you to remove EVERYTHING from your hard drive. They’re just delighted with their own “wit”.

The best way to avoid forum generated bothers is to choose one that’s well moderated. Moderation involves monitoring of posts, and unacceptable material usually doesn’t get through. Be aware though, that even the best forums have their problems. Moderation software can break down, or someone can make a concerted effort to flood the forum with meaningless posts. Should this happen, look for a link marked Report abuse of forum. Use the link, and come back to the forum next day, by which time the problem should have been cleared up. A reliable forum that has many knowledgeable and helpful contributers is Windows Annoyances. It’s divided into separate fora so that you can click on the one dedicated to your version of Windows.  Another good one for Australians is TechTalk. That has a companion forum on science and one on nature.

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