Death to spyware creators! Comic delayed by a few hours…
By Irma on August 18th, 2008Posted In: blog
Posted In: blog
I’m still posting a monday comic, no worries! I actually finished it last night. I could post it right now but it would be in B&W. So I just need to work on the colors and it will be done. It should have been completed by now… but…
I was researching an image for something for the comic and I got taken to a website that changed my desktop background to a blue screen with a spyware warning message, and ALMOST made me install some “anti virus” program. I’m not stupid (well, if I was a bit smarter then I would have been more careful about the sites I went to) so of COURSE I didn’t install it. But there was no “cancel” button or “x” so I hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete to End the task. So nothing installed, HOWEVER, the background was still there, and all options to change my desktop and screensaver under “properties” had been removed.
Knowing everything was backed up, I took a deep breath and tried to calm down (unsuccessfully), and sat down to eat dinner. During that time my computer showed a “blue screen of death” and appeared to be restarting. I panicked, nearly puked, and hit the power button on the front of the PC only to figure out that my computer was running a SCREENSAVER that only looked like it had a blue screen of death and continually restarted! RELIEF. After some research I found some KICKASS instructions (Commenter #44 AND #60 on this page gave the BEST instructions. I could kiss this person) to remove the startup file, the screensaver and the desktop AND to restore my ability to customize my desktop and screensaver myself.
So now I’m sitting here, with a tropical blue vodka martini, trying to calm my nerves enough to finish up today’s strip and get it up here within the next few hours. I apologize for the delay, but I hope you understand this was an extreme situation!!
Oh yeah, just on more thing: I propose the DEATH PENALTY for creators and distributors of spyware! Ya with me? 
Sounds to me like you need some better antivirus software. If you do not want to pony up the money for a paid copy from Symantec or McAffee I’d recommend AVG (http://www.grisoft.com/). Their free home version is pretty sufficent for most users.
I thought you were being facetious, but maybe your computer WOULDN’T pass a urine test…
That’s the most over the top spyware I’ve ever heard. I can’t top it, but I can come close.
Was visiting a common news site yesterday. I have pop up on, yadda yadda.
This thing minimized my screen, popped up a half-convincing “you have 3 trojans, yadda yadda”
I’m like yea right, X.
The X brings me to a site, that looks like its installing. I’m like, yea right, X.
The install bar goes up by 33% and says its wiped out the first trojan. And I’m like. :O
hit alt + f4 a ton of times which closed everything, ran my spyware scanner and nothing was there. So… I can’t top yours, but obviously there’s a new breed of spyware out there for sure…