The Virus

I got a harmless-looking message from a friend on Facebook with a video attached. It was late and I was tired, but I was curious about what she would be sending me, so I clicked on the link. It said I needed to download the latest version of Adobe to view the video, which made sense, because my computer had been telling me for some time that there were some Adobe updates that I needed to install. So I clicked on that too.

It didn't take me long to realize I had made a grave mistake. The video still wouldn't play, and suddenly my Facebook page was popping up on my screen, and showing me that it was forwarding this "video" (which I now realized was a virus) to all of my friends (250+). More things started popping up on my computer, keeping me from being able to control anything but making me watch in horror as it continued to send the virus to my friends.

I re-booted my computer. I tried to send word out to my friends not to click on the link, but my computer soon locked up again, and the same thing began happening. I tried several times, with the same results.

This was late Saturday night. I don't get on my computer on Sundays, so I turned it off completely. Monday I had to leave early for jury duty, and Monday night I was too tired to even think, but I did try a couple of strategies I had thought of while sitting and waiting to be called for jury duty. I changed my password on Facebook and fixed it so the password would have to be typed in every time before it could be opened. I made more efforts to alert my friends during the approximate 5-minute stretches I could work on my computer before it locked up and started acting crazy.

Friends sent me suggestions for how to get rid of it, but every website they told me about that offered help had been blocked by the virus, and I couldn't open it. I ran my antivirus scan, which found a couple of things but didn't knock it out.

Meanwhile, I was back in jury duty all day on Tuesday and Wednesday so still didn't have much time to fool with it. Finally on Wednesday night, a friend suggested I get into my computer's Safe Mode and gave me some suggestions about what to do. I tried that and, while I couldn't get it to work exactly like she said, when in Safe Mode my computer suggested I use System Restore to repair my computer. Basically what that does is to take your computer back exactly like it was on the date you specify (limited to days that it backed itself up). Of course, I would lose anything I had done since then, but I hadn't really done anything since I got the virus, so I didn't have much to lose. I had it restore things to the way they were two days before I got the virus, and as far as I can tell, it worked!

The lesson here (for me and for you) is this: Be careful what you open! Be very aware of clicking on any suspicious link, even if it came from someone you know. If in doubt, check with that person before opening it.

I think the thing that burned me up the most was that some brilliant person out there, who could be using their brains to find a cure for cancer or some other worthwhile cause, is using them to figure out ways to destroy people's computers that they don't even know. It's something I'll never understand.