posted on February 3, 2001 04:56:53 PM
Having just spent the day with my computer in the computer hospital, I would just like to tell anyone who sells on eBay to please, please, please install some sort of virus scanning software! There are many free ones, but I now have Norton installed and working for $33.00 for one year of protection. This after spending $130.00 to fix my computer after one of my winning bidders sent me a nasty little Trojan Horse.
I honestly do not know why anyone would do this (sport?). Anyway, they paid for the auction in December and emailed that they would be out of town for the holidays, so would I mind waiting until sometime in January to ship their item? No problem.
Meanwhile, their email address was added to my address book and "funny" things started to happen with my computer. And apparently they were reading everything on my computer (not a real problem since I do not keep bank accouts or credit card numbers on my combuter -- mostly they only got 112 ways to cook a wild duck!) It finally locked up my completely. I have to admit that I am an idiot concerning technology (ie computers). But the computer tech told me that this winning bidders email was the one with the Trojan Horse and what locked up my computer.
Anyway, hard lesson learned. I now run Norton Anti-Virus all the time (by the way, the email in question came with a Verisign that I had to click through). It is really spooky out here in cyberspace (especially eBay apparently).
The main point of this message is to let you know that if you are not running some sort of dependable anti-virus software -- you definitely need to be!!
Hope this will help someone avoid the big old mess I found myself in!
posted on February 3, 2001 05:24:34 PM
Norton System is great. Just a note, I have a separate email address, just for ebay, so if emails comes thru not Ebay related or with an attachment of any sort from a high bidder,etc., the email is deleted and the sender is emailed a response that I don't open up attachments and to email me the message again.
posted on February 3, 2001 07:08:11 PMNEVER OPEN ATTACHMENTS! There, got that off me chest!
A NEW old trojan is hitting all the A-O-SMELLERS out there! My kid in FL just got hit!
I don't care who the attachment comes from: don't fall to temptation! I got an email from a MR. SCRATCH last week offering 1 million for my SOUL... the contract (with a 7 year option) was a WORD attachment -- DELETE! DELETE!
posted on February 4, 2001 08:25:59 PM
Unfortunately I see a virus or worm about once a week from eBay buyer and seller email. The most common sent to me is KAK. I've also had the matrix virus and others I didn't even open--so variation of I Love You.
The posters of this thread give very good advice.
I also learned here on this board about NONAGS and InnoculateIT (an excellent free antivirus program):
