Date: 07/08/07 (Computer Help) Keywords: security, virus, antivirus, spyware, google I recently downloaded BitTorrent to try my hand at torrents. I ended up getting the very first thing I wanted very quickly and was enthused. I tried for something else - got it, but couldn't get it to work on my computer, so I deleted it. Then the pop-ups started... Mostly in IE (which I haven't used since, oh, 2002, I use Firefox and rarely Opera) - a page saying I need, um, WinAntiSpyware 2006 or something similar (forgive me). Yesterday I ran Spyware Doctor and it came up with 300+ threats. McAfee Security Center came up with nothing. Avast found a trojan. Spyware Doctor did it's thing and said that it got rid of all 300+ threats. This morning I came back to my computer and SD (it's scheduled to run every Sunday at 9am for a full scan) says there was 145+ threats. How? What? Why me??! So, I mosied over to download.com and started browsing. I downloaded: I also have these programs bookmared: Should I download them, too? Replace any of these for something I have now? Get rid of something I have now? Find something different altogether? I've been "using the Internet" since 1999-ish and I never had any issues (be it viruses, spyware, adware, etc.) with any of my computers (including the computer at my parents house, the one I'm using now will be the fourth computer I've had). I always had either no protection at all or just basic Norton, McAfee, or whatever came from our ISP. So now I'm all paranoid that my computer is going to end up being a paper weight. I've deleted BitTorrent and Limewire. All the .mp3, .avi, etc files that I've downloaded over the past few weeks have been scanned repeatedly over the past few days. I have no clue how I got any of this stuff - literally only check GMail, LiveJournal, & MySpace and use AIM to chat. Up until the recent torrent download, I was downloading everything from LJ users via sites like SendSpace, MegaUpload, MediaFire, etc. and they all say that those files have been scanned. So I'm assuming that whatever I got had to be from the torrents. But I really don't know. Sorry for rambling... and sorry for lack of links. I don't know how these things are passed and I was reading something about someone posting to a forum and their links were being altered. Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computer_help/796084.html
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