I was prompted to write this after a customer of mine brought his family PC into me to look at. He has only recently gone online and like any ‘newbie’, made the mistake that many computer users fresh into the world of the internet make - they believe anything that appears on their screens!

It all started with a visit to YouTube - a great source of videos that is used by millions of people every day - but apparently someone (who shall remain nameless!) decided to view a Pamela Anderson video or a similar kind of thing and during this a window popped up informing him that he really needed to improve his security - and to ‘click here’ and all will be well…Well. Seasoned ‘net users will recognise the scenario only too well, but a ‘net newcomer wouldn’t have realised the danger he was in. Of course, the inevitable happened and the system is now loaded with ‘ErrorSafe’ and other spyware junk that has to be removed.

The school holiday periods are usually busy for me because the kids - especially on rainy autumn days like this week - are bored and surfing the ‘net is a good way to pass the time. Parents often tell me that ‘their kids know a lot more about PCs than we do’. My response to that statement is often to say ‘well, they sure know how to get into more trouble online than you do for sure!’

The reality is that while some, and I stress the word some, kids know what they are doing and the pitfalls to avoid, the majority just don’t have any idea what kind of problems they can cause by their ‘click-happy’ approach.

Here’s a few tips to try to prevent costly repair work -
1. Tell the kids to stop and think (or ask you) before clicking on any warning message or offer to fix their ’security or spyware problems’. The only genuine warning messages that you will get are from your own installed antivirus or antispyware programs.

2. If there seem to be limited options available when one of these bogus warning messages appear - eg: you only get ‘Ok’ not ‘Cancel’ - then try to close the message window using the red cross at the top right if there is one. If there isn’t, close the internet browser, shutdown any other programs that are running and restart the PC. The bogus warning may complain but just let Windows end any programs and restart.

3. If your system does appear to be ‘behaving badly’ and you suspect an infection is the culprit - firstly, disconnect the broadband modem (turn it off if necessary) and get it looked at sooner rather than later. I often get asked to look at PCs that have been infected for days or weeks. The problems never fix themselves, believe me!

Andy Turner
Coastal Computers & Design

Edit: Free spyware removal software is available, but beware - there are a lot of bogus ones out there. My personal favourite is SpyBot Search & Destroy. But, please, ensure you get the right one as there are hundreds of ‘knock-off’ products with similar sounding names. The genuine article can be found here:

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html