Can I have been hacked even though my Antivirus

[BERIGAN]

To start at the beginning...The other night we got a seemingly typical fake ebay send us your passwords email, and I was showing my Dad how to forward the email to spoofs@ebay.com when all of the sudden in the to: bar this happened without hitting any key ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, No way to forward this email! Bastards In fact, not just that email, but any email could not be forwarded! So, shut down computer, same thing. So, since I have windows XP, I used system restore, went back a day, no more problem.

Next night, Saturday, I get a bunch of fake emails from earthlink. But wait, I try to delete them, and instead each and every one of the 10+ fake emails brings up a pop up window from McAfee saying something about a virus, and to back up some files. Didn't write it down (I know, stupid!) and kept on with the slow deleting process....thought I would again use system restore and be done with it. Well, I did check for viruses again, found none, made sure I was updated with the latest antivirus updates then went back in time. I didn't notice any problems, computer is still fast, no wacky cursor behavior, BUT now when I use my find message (Very important with my business) I get nothing back when I do. I still have the many emails in folders. I have made sure it is in the top folder, not just the inbox, no dates are given to limit a search, I have looked all over to see if there was some box, somewhere that could be clicked off, can't find any(Could be missing something of course)

I contacted earthlink's chat support early this morn, and told them my problem. They want me to put a higher spam filter on my system(I worry about customers trying to contact me and having to jump thru hoops, and if they don't understand english well, will they even get the set up?) and then told me to do this....

The following will guide you through repairing Internet Explorer 6 when running Windows XP. Please be advised you will need to close all browser windows (including this one and EarthLink 5 if you're using it) to proceed, so you may want to write down or print these instructions:

1. Click on Start.

2. Go to Run.

3. Type SFC /SCANNOW and hit Enter.

4. Follow the onscreen instructions

Please follow these steps and that should resolve your issue.

No onscreen instructions show up, just a little window and it takes about 10 minutes to make sure windows is ok, and just finishes.

Still can't make my find message work! I went to Microsoft to see if there was a newer version of Outlook, or explorer to download, there was not. I still tried to download and reinstall, but no dice. Help! Please!

If this is the future of spam, we all are going to have a lot of problems in the future.

[couw]

I'm not using Outlook myself (too tricky with all that interweaving I find), but I guess your mails and address book and other important stuff must be stored somewhere in a file and that you can make a backup of this.

Deinstalling Outlook and then reinstalling it and reading/importing the backup files may do the trick. Just a guess, but that's something I'd try.

Did you check anti virus sites for information on recent ugly viruses?

[David Ayers]

If you are viewing mail in the preview pane in Outlook it is a bad idea indeed.

Really, you want to delete spam on the server which can be accomplished using mailwasher.exe (go to www.mailwasher.net).

[king ubu]

Me being an absolute computer dummy... but when I changed from Outlook Express to Outlook, I DID manage to take all mails and contacts with me via the export/import function. You save all your stuff, got a file somewhere with it, and then import it again. I guess this should work as well when you deinstall Outlook and reinstall it again.

But, as I said, I'm no accomplished computer specialist at all.

ubu

[Guest Chaney]

  David Ayers said:

If you are viewing mail in the preview pane in Outlook it is a bad idea indeed.

Really, you want to delete spam on the server which can be accomplished using mailwasher.exe (go to www.mailwasher.net).

Good program and it allows you to preview messages before you decide to either allow delivery or mark for deletion.

[king ubu]

Berigan, to answer the question you ask in the title of this thread: yes, easily so! My notebook (which is just now receiving a new systemboard, SHIT!) is only protected by Norton, too, but I was lucky. Less so my parents: their desktop went down completely, they had some thirty viruses, some ten or twelve trojan horses, and Norton did not even take notice... If you install yourself a real tough firewall, though, you might be unable to even open an attached word-file...

ubu

[David Ayers]

You need to remember to update Norton. And for sure you need a firewall.

[mikeweil]

Surfing the web and/or receiving mails without an up-to-date firewall and anti-virus software is like having sex with daily changing partners without condoms in the HIV age. Someday it will happen .....

I never trusted that Outlook stuff. I use Opera to browse, Internet Explorer only to view pages Opera cannot handle, a firewall, and a mail programm that enables me ti view the mail headers and delete messages on the server without having to download them. The simplest rule is the most important: Never, Never open a mail whose sender you do not know, does not make sense or has some nonsense spelling in it. The second rule: keep the antivirus software up to date: I do it every day.

With all the files that Windows keeps in hidden places even when deleting a program I doubt this will remove the malware. Get an up-to-date anti-virus-software, make sure it takes care of backdoor programs and trojans as well or use an additional program for these, scan your computer and have them delete the stuff. You can use online scanning services to check your computer to verify it was done right. These can be found through any search engine.

Two weeks ago I had about thirty mail with the same virus. All but two were erased by the anti-virus software of my mail server, the other two by the virus guard on my computer. But if you get something like a keylogger, that is more difficult. A friend of mine caught one with some file exchange and took a week or two to notice and erase it.

Several freemail servers in Germany offer free anti-virus mail scanning and spam filters, I guess there are some in the US too. This should be supported to make it standard requirements for all mail servers!

[couw]

  mikeweil said:

Several freemail servers in Germany offer free anti-virus mail scanning and spam filters, I guess there are some in the US too. This should be supported to make it standard requirements for all mail servers!

yes. although some providers have had web.de on the list of spamming agents and have blocked my mails. It has happened several times and it's shite (untill it gets solved again of course).

[AmirBagachelles]

Get two firewalls, a hardware version integrated with the hub/router in your home and one for your PC. There will be no genuine fast Internet at the home I'm afraid, not with so much vulnerability scanning going on by the bad guys. There will be reverse firewalls soon (if not already) to control all outbound connections, and hopefully fix keylogger vulnerabilities that are enabling identity theft.

I am also going to get a separate credit card for my on-line commerce, no way will I put my main banking info out there any longer. This week I spotted a string of small bogus charges from an ISP, now I have to fill out paperwork to get the bank to credit my account. In the meantime, they had to cancel and reissue my debit card.

[BERIGAN]

Thanks for the advice guys! I will check out deleting emails at the server, as soon as I can figure out why my Find message is shot...

I do have up to date anti-virus protection, and a firewall....I keep wondering if I am paranoid, and somehow someone at our end clicked something to keep find message from. But see no function like that so far...

I did transfer some emails to new folders preparing to uninstall Outlook express, but then I couldn't find the way to douninstall! And I know I did it once upon a time! When I went to the control panel, the only thing that showed up was some outlook express update, same with Explorer, just an update....I used to be able to uninstall programs with no problems, but that was a few years back with Windows 95/98... How do I do this????? I even found I still had some old emails from my Old computer(2002) that with the help of Aloha Bob ,I had managed to transfer and hid...they were still hiding in folders

[BERIGAN]

Up again...Help!!!!!! Do I have to uninstall Explorer to be able to reinstall outlook?

Where are the Install/uninstall since they are not in Add/remove of my Control panel on Windows XP?

Thanks!

[David Ayers]

They should beunder install/uninstall preceded by the word Microsoft. That said, I don't have the same version of windows as you...

Good luck!

[Jim Alfredson]

  mikeweil said:

Never,  Never open a mail whose sender you do not know, does not make sense or has some nonsense spelling in it. The second rule: keep the antivirus software up to date: I do it every day.

This is the problem most people don't realize with Outlook.... if you have the Preview Pane active, as soon as you click on that message, it is opened by the Preview Pane and you're screwed. I'll repeat again, it is OPENED by the Preview Pane, even if you don't open it. As soon as you see part of the message in that Preview Pane, the message has already been opened... thank you Microsoft for such a stupid fuckin' feature.

Turn the pane OFF. It's good for nothing except infecting your computer.

Norton sucks. Try AVG instead. It's free, the updates are free, and it doesn't hog resources like Norton.

Keep your anti-virus software up to date but also scan your computer with Ad-Aware and Spybot, programs that find spyware that regular anti-virus programs almost never find. Most problems with IE not acting like it should are spyware, not viruses or worms.

Case in point: My sis's computer kept changing her homepage in IE. Usually to some weird porn site. Her virus definitions were months old. We updated them and AVG found 8 worms and got rid of them. IE was still changing homepage and weird porn sites still coming up.

So then we updated Ad-Aware and ran that... 30 more items. Then we ran Spybot after updating that... 8 more items including Hotbar, the absolute most irritating software ever written right next to Gator. Whoever coded these monstrosities should have their nuts cut off.

IE is still not going to the correct homepage. Come to find out the software from Comcast, her cable provider, is to blame. The fuckin' cable modem company's software is nothing but spyware (that you don't need to use a cable modem, by the way). I have to do research on how to get that off there since it has embedded itself within IE.

Makes me want to go to Linux so badly.

[mikeweil]

  b3-er said:

IE is still not going to the correct homepage. Come to find out the software from Comcast, her cable provider, is to blame. The fuckin' cable modem company's software is nothing but spyware (that you don't need to use a cable modem, by the way). I have to do research on how to get that off there since it has embedded itself within IE.

I had the same problem with my former Internet provider's software, which first kept changing the starting page in Internet Explorer to their homepage, even after I changed it manually, and then even disabled the manual change option! I had to edit the registry to get rid of it! Found instructions for this on some specialists' forum.

[mikeweil]

  b3-er said:

thank you Microsoft for such a stupid fuckin' feature.

Turn the pane OFF. It's good for nothing except infecting your computer.

Things like this are the reason why some guys program this malware - to point out the stupidity of many Windows features. I get their point, but can't tolerate computers of people are abused or damaged who are guilty of nothing but using Microsoft programs. They should rather spend their energies on developping better software and putting it on the web for free download, like the Linux stuff. There need to be more affordable alternatives to Microsoft, or this won't change.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

It isn't the preview pane that's the problem... no one needs to shut off their preview pane in Outlook to protect themselves from viruse. It's that the viruses exploit active scripting, which is turned on by default in Outlook Express. Just follow the directions from Microsoft, listed here.

With active scripting turned off, even if some scumware shows up that should launch with an active script, it won't. It's saved my ass a few times.

BTW, this sounds like you got a virus that was newer than your virus definitions. No virus software could have saved you if this was the case. Someone has to get a virus first and then the anti-virus people block it.