Like so many of us in the profession, I was asked to look at friend’s computer. Nothing specific was wrong; she had just moved out of an “Friend/Ex-Friend’s” house. She was worried that they might have done something to her machine. So I started looking at it. Nothing looked really out of place. The owner would never install anything (including updates or e-mail links). So after updating everything, I started to scan for viruses and malware. That’s when I noticed that there was no anti-virus software. I thought that was odd because there was the update program. I asked if she had uninstalled it and she said, “no.” It then hit me: the “evil plan” was to remove her anti-virus and trouble would soon follow. Fortunately, her “safe-surfing” habits of never opening or installing programs had saved her! Even after 3 months of surfing, she still had a clean machine. I guess this is pretty good evidence that “Safe-Surfing” and a little luck can keep you safe.
Filed under: Education, Misc., Stories | Tagged: Anti-Virus, computers, Education, Malware, Safe-Surfing, virus |
Securi-D's Weblog 
I have a friend who has to reload the OS on a regular basis because he gets so many viruses, even with freeware antivirus in place. I don’t run any virus protection on my Mac OSX, but I do run McAfee on the Parallels/Windows 7 installation. In the two years since I went rogue and bought a Mac, I’ve never had a virus. Let’s hear it for “safe surfing”!