Hello Tracey,
I don’t use Instant Messaging, or Hotmail or anything like that, so I’ll just have a few general things to say and hope I’m not talking too much through my hat.
I don’t know whether you trust your niece but you obviously trust your niece’s computer or anything that claims to be from her computer. You appear to have received a message with absolutely no hint that it has come from her except for the fact that it says it is from her computer. Without question you’ve accepted it is from her and clicked on any available links or attachments and been dealt with accordingly. Don’t worry because you’re very far from being alone. Many people expect that their anti virus and other programs will protect them from this sort of thing, but it’s just like seat belts and air bags in cars, you still have to watch where you’re going.
The email or message may not have been from your niece’s computer and in fact it probably wasn’t if the virus was written by someone who was smart. In fact if both you and your niece are getting these messages perhaps they’re originating from the computer of a relative or common acquaintance. Her email address and yours were possibly collected from that computer by the virus and it’s sending out emails in the names of all those people to all the rest. Those people, because they get an email from a name they know, often blindly click on the provided links or attachments and so the virus spreads.
Viruses aren’t designed to be found, they’re designed to spread until they’re the latest and the greatest in the history of the World. If possible they don’t advertise the real source of an infected email as this would just make detection of the source, and eradication, much simpler.
The lesson there is that you shouldn’t open attachments or click on links in emails unless the sender has included a message that clearly identifies him or her as the sender or unless they have indicated separately before hand that there is something on the way. If you ignore that rule it’s just a matter of shutting your eyes and taking your chances. It may be inconvenient but it’s true nevertheless.
The same applies when sending emails with links or attachments to other people. I know it’s so easy to send links to other people by just making one or two clicks but I’ve always thought that it was worthwhile when sending something to some one to spend a few minutes extra compiling a short message so that they could be sure it really was from a real person.
If you do get one of those emails with nothing in the header or the message that satisfactorily identifies the sender and you’re not expecting same and there’s a link or attachment just delete the thing. The odds are its rubbish, no one in their right mind would send anything important in such a fashion.
After you’ve done a full virus scan, if you’re still worried, try an online scan such as this one
http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner. Your anti virus program may have an inbuilt spyware scanner but you could do a scan with another spyware scanner as well. Get your niece to do this as well as children don’t tend to do this sort of thing and tend to click on anything at all simply because they are children. Kids shouldn’t be allowed to play on the superhighway unless they know what they’re doing or are being supervised by someone who knows what they’re doing otherwise they’ll get run over.
Make sure you have the very latest version of Internet Explorer, so that clicking on a malicious link can’t set off an ActiveX event that can change anything it likes on your computer. Better still get Firefox. Make sure you have all the latest updates from Windows Update. Make sure Windows Update is actually turned on. I’ve recently seen a relative’s computer, on which the operating system was installed by a professional, which had XP SP1 with automatic updates turned off and open to every form of attack that had been developed over the last five or so years. You can test your Windows Update status with Belarc Advisor
http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/Belarc ... elarc.html
Hope that’s useful,
Alan
so naturally I removed it, but
