yesterday, i was chatting with a friend and she sent me a link to what looked like a photo file... when i opened it, it turned out to be a virus... which in turn, automatically messaged all the people online on my buddy list the link and then closed all chat windows..... does anyone know what this is? and if so, how do i fix it?

You should probably pick up a copy of norton anti-virus, it catches code in webpages that does things to your computer you dont want it to do. I have been using it since 2002 and I havent cought a virus since.

Hope this helps.


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Sm0k3y Mcl3uD

Question: was the file's extension .com? If so, this is a new but simple virus, and instead of shelling out money for norotn, simply get AVG for free from grisoft.

~Viz

basic worm virus that uses MSN, AOL or whatever IM service. Most of them are .com's .bat's or .pif's.

Most im based virusses work that way, using msn to spread itself further.

Can't really imagine why noone ever takes the time to check out what file is received before opening it :|.

If you want to fix it, you have to find out what file it sends, then you can look up the name in google then you can find out the worm's name, then you can get a fix-tool

sickgrrl723 mentionned that the file seemed to be a photo file. This means that the file was probably a .jpg or a .gif file, or a photo.html file.
opening a picture file is what most of people send, and when they receive a photo they want to look at it.
the question is : how is it possible to send a virus in a photo file ?
The only way I see is the file being name picture.jpg.exe, and the default explorer options being set as "mask the extension for known programs", and then "photo.jpg.exe" appears as "photo.jpg"

If ti's the virus I think it is, it says something like "Am I pretty" and on anothe rline has a link to a file that you would think is an image, but it ends in a .com extension. For most of the recent ones of these viruses, AVg will get it.

~Viz

Several people I used to know were infected with these viruses. It's an interesting way to find out whose buddy lists you're still on.

it was a .bat file... i googled it and managed to find a way to get it off the computer... thank you guys for all your helpful suggestions! i really appreciate it... now if i could manage to get my site back up....

hey, the same thing happened to me, but when i ran AVG on my computer it claimed it found no virus. i then tried to open AIM again only to have the flow of im's coming out again, unable to stop them unless i sign off. any thoughts?

thank you

That reminded me to put in a new antivirus program. I recently got my computer back and they had AVG installed in it, but I'm not to keen on it. But for some reason it wasn't working anyway. But, I was going to give AntiVir a try. I've heard some good things about them. Only thing I'm not sure about is it was free, but it says it expires so i guess maybe it is just a trial period or I downloaded the wrong one. My girlfriend would go nuts if her instant messenger went haywire though, so I have to make sure I have some sort of protection