malware |

We’ve run into a bad situation lately regarding malware and free software. Last week we installed a ‘free’ program from Xilisoft, hoping to create a BluRay DVD using multiple avi videos. First, the program wasn’t free. The download was free, not the software. Watch out for anything that says ‘Free Download’. It’s almost always a lie. Anyway, that software installed a really bad bit of malware that spread across one of our computers. It took us a whole day to eliminate it.

Next, we re-installed Freecorder. We’ve used Freecorder in the past, hell, we’ve even recommended it. Forget what we said before, don’t install Freecorder now. Yes, we’ll change our previous post but, for now, stay away from it.

How do we know when malware is installed? Basically, things change. Search engines look different, even if you are left with your original search source. Freecorder installed its own ad feeder so, even though we could still use Google, there were ads at the top of the search window. Initially we thought that Google had changed their system but then we realized that Freecorder had installed their own bit of malware.

With the Xilisoft malware, our home pages changed, to the point where we can’t find a way to change them back. We’ll figure it out and describe it here. Search engines changed, too. All in all, there was much gnashing of teeth around the office.

TIP: When you’re installing free software, or even pay software sometimes, don’t accept the default settings. Go through each screen and read the words carefully. You don’t have to accept everything. Either uncheck anything you don’t agree with or ‘decline’ when asked if you also want to install such and such. This decline or accept part is new. You’d think that you can’t use the software if you decline but you can. What you are declining is the additional software that is bundled with the ‘free’ material.

Software such as Burnaware and Irfanview are completely safe, free of ad or malware and work perfectly. For downloading videos from Youtube or Daily Motion, we would recommend using Firefox and installing the Flashgot plugin. We’ve had luck with the Real Downloader too but it seems to have stopped working. Flashgot works for videos and whole pages of photos, too.

We used to use Freecorder for downloading music but now we wholeheartedly recommend the OffLiberty site: http://offliberty.com/ We wrote about how to use it here: Using OffLiberty to download MP3s.

Thanks for reading! Let us know if you’ve had problems with malware in the past. Tell us how you got it and, hopefully, how you got rid of it.

Don’t respond or click on any link that you get from Facebook, unless you are 100% sure it is from Facebook. Here’s why:

1. We got this email today in one of our junkmail folders:

Photo of junk mail from Facebook — **Looks legitimate, right?**

2. We do have a Facebook account for this email address but we rarely use it. We’ve got our email settings in this Facebook account set to never send email. We also don’t know anyone named Christine McLain Gibbs.

3. We didn’t click on the link, that’s for sure. But we were curious as to how this think worked. We knew it was a scam but didn’t know what it was supposed to do. The links led to the following address: (We’ve left spaces in it so it doesn’t work and don’t try to make a link out of it) http://www. unitedtec.org /mobile.html

Our browser asked if we wanted to use Java when we pasted the link into a new window. We didn’t allow it and after a few seconds, we were taken to a real Facebook page. We assume the link sucked Facebook passwords from our cache using Java. Even though we didn’t allow Java to run, we changed our Facebook password anyway.

4. Unitedtec.org is a legitimate site, we think. It seems to be some sort of religious, Christian teen site. The url in the IP address leads to Site5 hosting. We’ve notified both of these sites in the hopes that these emails can be stopped.

If you remember to never click an email link from Facebook, you’ll be safe. Good luck!

Thanks for reading!

a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun

Tag Archives: malware

Xilisoft, Freecorder and Malware – Beware!

Facebook Scams – Don’t fall for them

a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun