carbonel

No, not this one. I'm typing this from my laptop.

Last night, as I was browsing the web on my desktop machine, my toolbar popped up with a message that my firewall wasn't on, and showed the usual Microsoft screen to turn on said firewall. I don't know where that came from or how it managed to load, but that (as subsequent events showed) was obviously a spoof that I got fooled by. Shortly thereafter, I got a toolbar message saying my computer was at risk, and an antivirus screen popped up showing that I was completely invaded by spyware and viruses. Except that this time I recognized that it wasn't real, because a) it wasn't the right screen for my antivirus software, and b) it was visibly a graphic rather than text -- just that little bit fuzzy.

I tried to shut it down, but it kept popping up, and I finally closed down the computer over its objections. When I tried to reboot the computer, I twice got various blue screens of death, and it wouldn't go into Safe Mode.

This morning it's going to the Geek Squad to see if I still have my files -- and to disinfect the computer, of course. The rest is merely annoying and expensive, but if it trashed my files, I shall be exceedingly unhappy.

I'm incredibly annoyed with myself for falling for this, though I partially blame Windows, with its helpful (real) popup screens.

ETA: The guy at the Geek Squad recognized my description, and said it's not a destructive virus. So it's money and aggravation, but not a disaster. Also that it's a fairly new class of webpage-based malware. So beware of Windows popups while browsing the Web.