My friend's work computer recently got hit with the win32mydoom.N virus. Her IT department took care of it but now she's worried about her home PC. Here's my response to her:
OK…you got hit with the classic scam. They infect your PC then a Pop Up appears telling you to buy an Anti Virus product to remove the infection. The AV product is a rogue program and won’t remove anything but it will install lot’s more malware. People wonder how other people make money with malware…now you know. And it’s only going to get worse due to economy…ever wonder what some of the laid off/pissed off IT guys are going to be doing with their free time?
You’re currently using AVG and Spybot to protect your PC and are wondering if you’re safe. Kind of, but not really. You’re probably still using Windows Firewall which isn’t all that great and you’re lacking in protection against Zero Day Threats. So, proceed to my Free PC Protection page and complete steps 2 and 4.
I prefer Comodo Firewall and it now gives you an option to not install the Anti Virus that is bundled with it. You don’t need it because you’ve already got AVG. Once you install your new Firewall be sure to disable Windows Firewall.
I would recommend Threatfire and definitely WinPatrol to improve your Real Time Protection.
Also, if you’ve still using Internet Explorer as your browser try Firefox. I’ve been using it for about a month now and find it’s faster and more stable. Firefox will not do anything to your IE browser when you install it so if you ever want to use that it will still be available.
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