Do you know about this computer virus yet? It scared the heck out of me!

You can be a Crunchy Parent and Geek too! You might save someones computer life!

Being computer literate is no longer optional as a dear family discovered this past week. My husband and I had been asked to try and sort out some weird computer issues while visiting family after a funeral this past week. It started out normally enough, I thought it was just the normal cookie tracking slowing everything down. She had run the verizon security that comes with her internet package a few days before our arrival. It had found 5 issues, a few trojans and such that is couldn’t delete in it’s user directory but that she did have it quarantine. A family friend had come over after she had done that and installed microsoft security essentials. This was concerning as I had seen the virus spoof of that program a few times in the last year but never the original and my worry was that if she had that program would she know if she got the virus and the difference between the too. I told her if it was my machine I would remove it but I didn’t want to be rude to the family friend who also happens to be my elder and from what my Father says a fellow gamer. Gamers tend to be on top of such things so I tried not to worry about it. However things where just not working as they should. When I added a clean and secure copy of Adaware many many things came up, dealt with those but still things were not right. Before we could run malwarebytes on it though she was playing on facebook and had an odd screen come up. My husband thought it would be something small, but she was really upset, when she brought the laptop to us to show us both of us sat up quickly and in shock.

It was the first time we had seen a virus like the one on her screen. It was scary and exciting at the same time. It was a bit like watching a horror movie really late in a great theater! I kept laughing over and over looking it over. It was stunning and I could see why she worried and I could see why people would fall for it if they didn’t know better. My husband and I thankfully know better.

It was the US COURTS ransomware. In short it locks up your computer till you pay to have it removed (and it will not be really removed even if you pay.

If all the official looking seals are not enough to scare the pants off someone the kicker is that the virus turns on your webcam and tries to get a photo of you. In this case all they got was a picture an empty kitchen. Can you picture how scary it might be though if you didn’t know this was BS to begin with and who wants strangers being able to take pictures of them with their webcam? So being the practical girl I am, that is what I wanted to deal with first.

    I grabbed the closest thing I had and made it into a webcam cover. A styrofoam cup with two triangles cut into the sides goes over the laptop webcam easily. Notice that the above computer is not the infected computer. Same brand but mine is smaller and faster. I feared it being on the same network at the time could mean mine was infected and I didn’t know it yet. I didn’t want to chance it turning on my webcam and getting any shots of me laying in bed as I tend to do my best writing in bed after all. You might be pleased to know my laptop was not infected. After making a webcam shield for the infected computer my husband went to work cleaning it up. It did take a few hours, mostly for the scanning. Malwarebyes found a lot and hitmanpro did the rest. Simple enough. I honestly expected worse from a virus that looked that scary. I then tried to teach family members about internet security and safety on sites like facebook. Lets hope it helped them a bit. It gave me some ideas on things I need to learn though. I know I can keep others from getting to my webcam by removing the cams driver but I don’t want to go that extreme.

My 7 year old is getting his own laptop this fall, he already has a desk top as does our 5 year old. I am glad they love computers so much and so glad they are so open to learning about them. While some complain my 7 year old can’t fish because he doesn’t like to I have to say that my son knows a heck of a lot more about computers than many of the old people who can fish and pick on him about it!

I am glad we got to help family with computer issues. We do love computers and we do love to help and we have saved them a lot of money. We will always help when we can. I think though it is really important for young ones and not young ones to become as computer savvy as possible as unless the unthinkable happens, computers are here to stay and so are those happy to take advantage of people who not educated about them.