OT: Be careful surfing RealGM (viruses/malware)

[TCHOKE]

took me awhile to manage to get that crap off my desktop computer at home
and it happened to my computer at work too... not fun at all

[Courtside Cynic]

Same thing happened to me last week. I had a sales call the next day, couldn't use my laptop, so I had to go into work super early and borrow another, download new software for the computer, and re-format my presentation.

Not cool. I guess I am a little naieve for using IE, so I have since gotten FF - that is after I have completely refomatted my computer with the system recovery disk.

[redeye514]

This has only happened to recently... not knowing what the cause was, I've been infected on my work cpu, laptop and home cpu!! Thankfully my IT guy is a nice guy and reformatted everything for me. he seemed to think it might have been a UFC website I visited.... however, I got the message pop up twice at home when on RealGM, and reading this thread now, I know it's the culprit (thankfully, I shut downeverythin before I got infected... I hope... *knocks on wood*)



ANYWAYS



WTF is the solution?


I have to be Internet Explorer 8 (work), and am certainly not going to stop readin realGM. What am I suppose to do???

[lostradamus]

you literally cannot get rid of AntiVirus Pro. reformatting doesn't always get rid of it (in my case, it did not). any attempt to remove it on your own with other software may seriously rape your computer system.

Chrome, from what i understand, has its own security issues.

If you formatted your computer and it didn't get rid of Antivirus Pro, you did it wrong.

+1000

I almost fell over laughing when I read that

[99 Problems]

I don't even see ads lol... Firefox+Adblock+Norton 360 ftw....

[ranger001]

If you have IE your best bet to block ads is to change your hosts file. What this does is that it stops the request to a bunch of known spyware and adware sites. Get the hosts file from here:-
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

[mastertang]

I use Firefox at home and it's fine... however I was checking RealGM on my friend's computer once and it got a nasty virus. He hasn't been able to use his computer since lol. I feel pretty bad.

[Komodo]

I got a nasty trojan from RealGM over the summer AT WORK. Things could definitely improve around here.

[Kevin Willis]

yeah got the antivirus live ... was a pain in the ass to get rid of! that and my wife thought I was surfing for pron!


2 x's because of my addiction to real gm!

Wait you weren't searching for pron?!?!

OK that explains it because one of my PCs always get it and I only use it for a couple of things (not pron). Antivirus Pro was a freakin' epic battle. It shut down my CA antivirus - shut it down completely. Then I have a few free malware and virus programs and tried to run them and it shut them down. Only one survived and it was able to get rid of it. Then I released the hounds and all four of my antivirus programs finally cleaned it up. But it screwed up my internet settings and connections so I had to redo that.

I blamed it on the online anime I watch sometimes but now that I think of it, it only happens when I surf realgm from that PC. Thanks so much OP for this, it answers a ton of questions.

p.s. CA Antivirus sucks. It's cheap for a reason.

[YogiStewart]

you literally cannot get rid of AntiVirus Pro. reformatting doesn't always get rid of it (in my case, it did not). any attempt to remove it on your own with other software may seriously rape your computer system.

Chrome, from what i understand, has its own security issues.

If you formatted your computer and it didn't get rid of Antivirus Pro, you did it wrong.

+1000

I almost fell over laughing when I read that

laugh it up, fat boy.
first, i didn't reformat. IT dudes do it. work computer.
second, my suspision is that AntiVirus Pro embedded itself in my work software that was reinstalled, causing a reinfection. i am pretty sure they reinstalled software after copying it to a tertiary hard drive.

or....i picked up the virus a 2nd time from RGM.

[Brinbe]

Ad-block plus FTW

[MrBojangelz71]

I had my PC at work infect 3 times with the Antivirus Pro virus. totally hijacked my PC. Lucky for me I am the Supervisor for our I.T. department and can easily re image my PC back to it's original state. Starting using FireFox and haven't had a problem since.

The Anitvirus pro virus was able to get through ESafe and Symantec. Windows just recently released a patch to address it:


http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=5096&tag=nl.e589

[Candide]

on a side note, which anti-virus program do you guys recommend? i use kaspersky (russian version) on one computer, but my other computer is naked and devoid of virus scanners. i used to have a campus-issued Norton Antivirus program but i noticed that it slowed everything done and required 5 minutes to load every time i turned on the computer. suggestions?

[tecumseh18]

I had a scary incident two days ago instantly after calling up RealGM. It was probably Antivirus Pro that popped up on the screen.

I was using IE 8, with an updated version of Vista and McAfee. I simply exited from IE immediately via task manager and restarted the computer. A full McAfee scan showed nothing, and I haven't had any problems since.

[YogiStewart]

while i cannot suggest that you turn all ads off (RGM needs ad revenue to operate), i strongly suggest MalwareBytes' anti-malware combined with Kaspersky.
those both stop everything dead in its tracks.
i can't use Firefox at work, and lo and behold, my computer was infected via (likely) RGM.

the best was when http://www.porn.com and http://www.viagra.com start popping up along with the fake virus scans along with every .exe being crippled by AntiViru Pro (the malware). so much fun when your computer is completely disabled. yay.

Does RealGM get paid by just having the ads in place? or they get paid when people click on the ads? Because whether I have the ads showing or not, I have absolutely no intention of ever clicking on any of them.

as you probably know, mods have zero vested interest in the businessside of RGM. i would assume that RGM gets paid per clicks, but that is a guess.